North’s first negative pressure rooms open

 | Fri 15 May 2020 12:45 ICT

Chiang Mai University’s Faculty of Medicine officially opened the north’s first Negative Pressure Room for Emergency Department yesterday.

Until now Mahanakorn Hospital only had one separate room in the emergency room where patients with infectious diseases could go to be safely separated from other patients. Seeing how the COVID-19 pandemic has spread, doctors at the hospital became concerned that this one small room was not enough to mitigate any spread in such times. It was therefore decided to build a special emergency room to cater to larger numbers of infectious people.

Thanks to the generosity of the faculties of engineering and medicine, as well as the alumni of the faculty of engineering which together raised 5.5 million baht, this room is now fully operational, taking 21 days to complete.

The Negative Pressure Room for Emergency Department has its own separate ventilation system, a HEPA Filter + UVC and ozone filtering, and has a total of four separate rooms each with its own negative pressure so that it ensures safety for all those entering and leaving.

These rooms will be used in the future for patients with other high risk infections such as TB and influenza.