I visited a few shelters lately across Canada. What do they have in common? Infectious diseases are something they found extremely common… And that’s not so abnormal when you think about it. Shelters are definitely “open” environments, with new animals coming in on a regular basis, that’s why they were created originally. New animals, with unknown medical status, increasing the infectious disease risk. Every person working in a shelter environment will be able to confirm you this: they are hard to control. But there are still few tips out there that can be used, and they will definitely make your life easier! Like the “clean to dirty principle”!
What’s that? In fact it comes from the food industry and simply means that “care and cleaning efforts (the outmost important thing in a shelter environment) begin in the more vulnerable sectors, moving to the potentially infected sectors”. This means that the shelter’s design should be arranged so that movement through the facility (“foot traffic”) and cleaning should proceed from the areas housing the most susceptible to disease and/or healthiest animals, to those who are most likely to be a source of contagious disease.
From a practical point of view, this is how it should work:
This is a very simple measure that can help to limit diseases spreading! Think about it, in your fight against infectious diseases, you will definitely benefit from it!!!
DR. EMMANUEL FONTAINE 