The moment healthcare facilities have been anticipating and dreading is now official as the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that an influenza pandemic is definitely underway. So how do healthcare facilities protect their staff with the right products and processes? Healthcare Purchasing News offers some tips from the pros to help everyone breath easier.

One of the dirty little secrets that may or may not come as a surprise to healthcare professionals is that an alarming number of hospitals and clinics are a breeding ground for filth and potentially life-threatening pathogens that could be controlled if they followed basic processing procedures and protocols.

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Steam sterilization process failures and recalls:
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The medical waste management market experienced a seismic shift during the last two decades. Going back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, hospitals faced feverish fallout for operating on-site incinerators with neighborhood protests loosely organized under the "Not In My Backyard" banner, as well as stringent regulations by the federal government and a rapidly consolidating competitive landscape among medical waste treatment and disposal companies.

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