Regulations on location, design, and facilities of hospitals and infectious disease treatment facilities

The Ministry of Health has just issued Circular No. 18/2013/TT-BYT dated July 1 regulating the location, design, conditions of facilities, techniques, and equipment of infectious disease examination and treatment facilities.

Accordingly, infectious disease hospitals must be built in places with convenient transportation systems, safe environmental distances from residential areas and nature reserves; with good technical infrastructure and environmental sanitation systems. The area of ​​land for hospital construction is taken according to hospital design standards from 50m2 - 100m2/bed, with reasonable geometric dimensions, enough to arrange the following construction items: medical examination block, technical - paraclinical - functional exploration block, patient accommodation block, administrative and general service block, technical - logistics block and auxiliary works.

The overall hospital layout must be planned according to the one-way principle, the examination and patient accommodation areas must be arranged according to the principle of ensuring safe isolation distance and limiting internal traffic crossing. The construction area accounts for a maximum of 35% of the total land area. The area for planting trees for shade and isolation from the outside accounts for 35% to 40% of the land area.

The workplace of the director, deputy director, department head, faculty head, and general administration block is arranged in a separate area.

For infectious diseases departments in hospitals: Infectious diseases departments must be built in a separate area; the construction location of the department must be at the end of the main wind direction, ensuring isolation distance from surrounding structures.

The operating rooms and sterilization areas for processing medical instruments and equipment are arranged in one-way lines. The laboratories must ensure closed requirements to ensure environmental hygiene, prevent infection and not affect test results; ensure microclimate requirements at each level.

The patient area is designed with dynamic partitions divided into many areas on a single unit, ensuring isolation when needed at each level. Each infectious disease examination and treatment facility is arranged with a technical area to provide services and a training area for lower levels.

Infectious disease examination and treatment facilities must be supplied with electricity 24 hours a day to meet lighting requirements and equipment usage; be supplied with clean water continuously throughout the day from tap water sources and treated water storage tanks that ensure hygiene and quality standards; have a sterile water supply system for operating rooms, procedure rooms, and for laboratory testing. There must be a system to treat water supply, wastewater, and exhaust air.

Medical equipment of infectious disease examination and treatment facilities is applied according to the List of medical equipment standards for provincial and district general hospitals, general clinics, commune health stations and village health bags issued under Decision No. 437/QD-BYT dated February 20, 2002.

According to (dangcongsan.vn) - HL