Outbreaks and incidents of diseases on ships: the reason for clean ships

The more people who take cruises the greater the risks of bacterial and viral infection spreading rapidly, not just through the ship, but also back on land. One infection can damage a cruise line’s reputation – having spent a large sum of money on the holiday of a lifetime, it’s very hard for them to have to spend most of the holiday throwing up in the nearest toilet. Yet this is what will happen unless ship sanitation procedures are not addressed. Then what? Bookings are well down as they tell their friends about it all.

Its not only cruise ships either. Naval ships can be easily infected as can fishing vessels and cargo vessels. Most ships in fact. Most outbreaks are linked to food and water consumed while on the ship rather than on land but there exists the possibility of infections being introduced through passengers. However the ship itself may take some blame. Our research shows that it is deficiencies in cleaning in food preparation areas, and deficiencies in cleaning in general which are the prime causes of bacterial and viral infections. Dirt harbours all known germs! However, other contributory factors are

  • contaminated water and water storage tanks of poor design leading to cross-contamination
  • the simple factor of a closed environment which is a ship, with a large number of people in a small space, and shared sanitary facilities
  • a poorly maintained ventilation system
  • poorly implemented sanitising systems, including hand sanitising products availability for use.

It can be easily seen that all the problems are all related to just one thing – poor cleaning systems. Good sanitation is not a case of slinging a bottle of bleach around and hoping for the best. Good sanitation is designed around a simple system which should be very easy to implement and which should be understood by everyone so that it achieves just what it says it does. The simple systems Futureclean Assured Systems design for you do just that, because we take every factor of the ship’s systems into consideration before it is designed.

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