An Analytical Study for Reducing Infection Transmission in Chest Hospitals in Egypt.

Abstract

With the spread of infection and an increase in the number of visitors and patients in developing countries, especially in governmental hospitals that provide affordable healthcare, there has been an exhaustion in energy resources accompanied by a global increase in energy prices. Since some buildings are unable to properly use mechanical ventilation, they have turned to using recycled air, which has aided in the spread of infection. Therefore, it has become mandatory for these buildings to turn towards natural ventilation, especially after the World Health Organization recognized natural ventilation as a solution to combat the spread of infection in 2007. There are also limited studies covering the relationship between natural ventilation, airborne transmission of infection, and architectural variables. In this research, we will focus on studying the effect of ventilation and architectural variables on the spread of airborne infections in government chest hospitals using Ansys®21 Fluent CFD solvers. Architectural variables such as height, width, and depth and their effect on the amount of infection inside the ward and its spread were studied. It was found that an increase in height had a positive effect on reducing infection by 12.14%,while the increase in width had 3.54% effect and finally, an increase in depth had a negative effect on infection by 10.75%. Then, an increase in height was studied once with an increase in width and it was found to lead to a decrease in infection by 31.73%, depending on the baseline case and the amount of infection in it. An increase in depth was found to lead to a decrease in infection by 2.37%. Additionally, the acquired infection for each patient decreased from a range of 6-6.40% to a range of 2.40-2.80% in the first case and 3.40-3.70% in the second case. Therefore, the experiments confirm the effect of architectural variables on the rate of ventilation and the proportion of infection and its spread.