USA
The Healthcare Laundry Accreditation Council (HLAC) is encouraging its accredited laundries to remind their healthcare customers of the benefits of having an HLAC-accredited laundry as a textile provider. This follows the recent publication of a report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that includes its first ever list of antibiotic-resistant "priority pathogens."
The WHO report lists 12 bacterial threats and ranks them into three categories according to the urgency of the need for new antibiotics: critical, high and medium priority.
"WHO has made it clear that their list is not meant to scare people about new superbugs, but that it's intended to signal those areas of focus to address urgent public health threats," said John Scherberger, HLAC board president. "Most of the bacteria families listed by WHO are familiar to those of us in the healthcare laundry industry. In fact, they've been the focus of HLAC's processes for more than 10 years."
