SYNOPSIS

The corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) started in Wuhan, China, has caused a great concern to the world. During this synopsis being written, World Health Organization has reported nearly 50,000 confirm cases of globally. In China, 1716 healthcare workers have been confirmed infected with COVID-19 including six deaths. As of 18th February 2020, there were 22 COVID-19 confirmed cases with nine already discharged from hospital in Malaysia (Source; Ministry of Health).

How do we protect ourselves from being infected by the virus? Are the hospital facilities safe for infectious diseases? Do the hospital engineers know how to manage infectious cases?

In hospital, the infected patients shall be screened at the Emergency Department Decontamination Area (isolation room) and then warded in isolation rooms to ensure that the patients are not infecting the healthcare givers and other staff or visitors to the hospitals. The safety of the healthcare workers not only depend on the personnel protective equipment but more importantly the isolation rooms have to be designed, engineered and maintained according to the standard positive or negative pressure isolation rooms.  Facility Manager and engineer must understand the importance of separation between clean and dirty areas and ventilation pressure regime requirements so that the isolation rooms serve the function affectively.

The speakers shall highlight on the requirements of isolation rooms, the type of isolation rooms and the needs for good design and maintenance of isolation rooms in hospital. The speaker shall refer to guideline on conceptual design and engineering requirement for isolation room by Ministry of Health, Malaysia as the reference for Malaysian standards. He then shall relate his experience as the surveyor for Malaysian Society for Quality in Healthcare and drafter of the standards Facilities and Biomedical Engineering on Malaysian hospitals’ condition.


SPEAKER BIODATA

Ir. Al-Khairi Mohd Daud has 20 years of experience in research, cement, oil and gas, petrochemical, oleo chemicals industries and health care facilities. He has gained various experiences in design, construction, testing and commissioning, operate and maintain facilities and plants from various multinational companies both abroad and locally. He has served in various roles as engineers and manager to the plant and facilities.

With such a diverse industrial background, Ir. Al-Khairi has formed Faqeh Management, an asset and reliability company to improve the equipment reliability and maintenance standard in the industry. The main function of the company is to provide training and consultancy work for the industry. Among the industry that he has provided services are hospital and health care, airports, facilities management organization, printing and palm oil mills.

Currently Ir. Al-Khairi is the Committee Member of the Oil, Gas and Mining Technical Division and a member of Building Services for the Institution of Engineers Malaysia (IEM). He is a Principle Interviewer to qualifying engineers for professional interviews as well as a committee member for engineer’s log book to ensure mechanical engineers registered with IEM has the correct training to qualify as professional engineers.

Ir. Al-Khairi has written articles and delivered numerous talks on maintenance and reliability to IEM fraternity in Maintenance, Healthcare and Green Technology Seminar. Ir. Al-Khairi is also an associate member of Institute of Asset Management UK, Biomedical Engineering Society of Malaysia and Malaysian Society for Quality in Health (MSQH). He is a surveyor for MSQH checking on the facilities design and maintenance as well as safety and environment aspects of hospitals in Malaysia.