IFHE NEWS
A safer and more sustainable approach to PPE in Canada
The Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care has recently led research on personal protective equipment (PPE), intentionally designed and manufactured as reusable – including gowns, goggles, face shields, and elastomeric respirators – to identify ways to reduce plastic PPE waste, writes Vice-Chair of the Communications Group at the Canadian Healthcare Engineering Society (CHES), and the Coalition’s co-founder and Communications director, Kent Waddington. He said: “Most of the PPE used in Canada is plastic – much of it disposable – and the research focused on opportunities for reduction and reuse. Reusable, safe, and Infection Prevention and Control Canada-(IPAC) approved PPE gowns were identified as offering the greatest opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Given a broad adoption of reusable gowns in Canada, medical glove use generated the most significant waste quantities.” “It was important to consider the
reusability of PPE to address both waste plastics and GHG emissions, while also enabling a secure supply of safe, IPAC- approved PPE products,” said Dr Myles Sergeant, Executive Director of the Coalition (pictured). The research project, entitled ‘A
circular economy model for hospital- generated PPE and medical single- use plastic waste: Demonstrating opportunities for reduction and reuse’, and funded by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), also explored ‘the many synergies with other government and health system priorities that would enhance opportunities and support for a reusable PPE system’. The Coalition says a ‘comprehensive
reusable PPE health system’, which includes reusable products, and local infrastructure for reprocessing, sanitising and disinfecting, with associated transport and tracking systems, should be explored ‘as a strategy to ensure 100% access for some PPE, and for the many environmental, social, and economic co- benefits of such a system’. “It’s a lot easier to scale up your reuse
cycles – such as laundering gowns or replacing the filters in your reusable respirators – than to remanufacture more of something, and it creates less pollution,” said Dr. Andrea MacNeill, Medical Director of Planetary Health, Vancouver Coastal Health, British Columbia, one of the project hospital partners. “Our healthcare laundry
28 Health Estate Journal February 2024
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Dr Myles Sergeant.
partner, K-Bro, was able to easily scale up laundering of reusable gowns and keep up with our needs. In some of our BC hospitals the reusable gown use ranges from 80-100% now.” Altaf Stationwala, CEO of Mackenzie Health in Ontario, added: “Converting to reusable gowns immediately introduced a predictable supply of product for the foreseeable future, and reduced our environmental footprint.” Mackenzie Health has now converted all the isolation gowns used in its ICU to reusables. This thought was echoed by project partner, University Health Network (UHN) in Ontario. Joanne Bridle, Executive director, FM-PRO Operations, at UHN, explained: “Early in the pandemic, UHN and our healthcare linen services partner, Ecotex, collaborated on the development of a high-volume reusable isolation gown programme. This quickly scalable process enabled Ecotex to launder and return clean reusable isolation gowns up to three times a day during the peaks of the COVID-19 pandemic, when reusable isolation gown use had more than tripled – to 120,000 gowns per week. Through this creative and sustainable local initiative, TeamUHN was consistently provided with high quality reusable isolation gowns during this very challenging time. Today, over 99% of the isolation gowns used at UHN are reusable.” For more information, visit the
Coalition’s project webpage at: https://
greenhealthcare.ca/ppe-msup/
“I hope that by now many of you will have had the opportunity to read the latest edition of the IFHE Digest (the 2024 issue),” writes the publication’s Commissioning Editor, Andy Wavell. “Once again, we have been supported by many members of the international community, resulting in 23 articles being available in the digital version. The link, for those who have not seen it yet, is: http://tinyurl. com/5aj98kev “The circulation list each year is based on the details held by the IFHE Secretariat in Portsmouth, and historically this also details whether member organisations would like to receive some hard copies for distribution among their members. By using the link above every member of the IFHE family could have the opportunity to gain useful knowledge from the varied input. I am hearing more and more that the electronic version is sufficient for many national organisations. It would be helpful if your preferences could be made known to me so that we do not print excess copies of the Digest. I can be contacted at grandyandy68@gmail. com “Work on the 2025 edition will
start soon, and I would be grateful if you could canvas your members for interesting articles that could be included. Finally, thanks must go to the Editor, Matt Seex, for translating your synopses into meaningful articles.”
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