Awards for Michael Riepl und Miranda Suchomel

During the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Austrian Society for Hygiene, Microbiology and Preventive Medicine the Prizes of Hygiene, Hospital- and Industrial hygiene and Microbiology for 2012 have been awared.

Two prizes of them go to the Institute for Hygiene and Applied Immunology of the Center for Pathophysiology, Infectious Diseases and Immunology.

The medical student Michael Riepl, who has completed his diploma thesis with the title "Microbiological Quality of Dialysis Water" at the Unit "Water Hygiene" (working group of Ass. Prof. Dr. Alexander Kirschner) is the winner of the Austrian Award for Hygiene. Due to the exceptionally high effort and the excellent quality of Michael´s work a publication resulted entitled „Applicability of solid-phase cytometry and epifluorescence microscopy for rapid assessment of the microbiological quality of dialysis water“ published 2011 in the top journal Nephrology, Dialysis and Transplantation. In the frame of this work the microbiological quality of water samples, taken during the regular surveillance of dialysis water treatment systems, was investigated by means of solid phase cytometry and epifluorescence microscopy. The results were compared with those obtained by standard cultivation technique for colony count. We could show that for the assessment of the microbiological quality of dialysis water the method using solid phase cytometry offers a reliable and much quicker alternative (time duration one day only) to the cultivation technique which requires an incubation period of 7days.
This study is a joint publication of the ICC Water & Health.

The prize of hospital- and industrial hygiene goes to Dr. Miranda Suchomel. The title of the honoured paper is "Testing of the World Health Organization recommended formulations in their application as hygienic hand rubs and proposals for increased efficacy". This paper describes how the effectiveness of the published formulations by the WHO for hygienic hand disinfection can be improved and adequate disinfection of hands after 30 s instead of 60 s can be achieved what should contribute the improvement of compliance.
Dr. Suchomel is head of the working group medical and technical hygiene engaged with this issue for years.