Clinical waste was dumped in with dirty linen 40 times and sent off to the laundry at Kent hospitals, according to an article on the Kent Online website.
The incidents occurred in a three-month period at hospital sites across east Kent, including Kent and Canterbury, the QEQM in Margate and Ashford’s William Harvey, and included items such as blooded bandages being mixed up with bedding, the article said.
Officials said it was difficult to identify where the contaminated linen has come from once it has left hospital sites and sent to the trust’s in-house laundry operation.
"Our own laundry processes 6.5 million items a year and has very strict procedures to ensure that any clinical waste mistakenly sent to laundry is not included in clean linen sent back to wards," the hospital trust’s director of infection prevention and control, Sue Roberts, said.
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