Highlights

• CDC recommends annual cleaning of hospital water tanks.
• We used hydrogen peroxide for periodic disinfection of our hospital's water tanks.
• No bacteria were isolated in any of the post-cleaning samples.
• Hydrogen peroxide is a simple and efficacious method of water tank disinfection.

Abstract

Background

Hospital water is often an overlooked yet preventable source of hospital-acquired infections. CDC recommends annual cleaning of water reservoirs in health care settings. In our tertiary care hospital, periodic disinfection and microbiological surveillance of all the water tanks in hospital premises is carried out. The aim of this paper is to report the diversity of bacterial flora noted and the role of cleaning method adopted in our hospital.

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