Canberra Health Services marked International Cleaners Day on Monday by thanking its cleaners for their work on the COVID-19 frontline.
Minister for Health, Rachel Stephen-Smith met with a group of cleaners at Canberra Hospital to thank them personally for the extraordinary work they’d done during the height of the pandemic.
Ms Stephen-Smith said the cleaners’ contribution had been and continued to be critical to the wellbeing of health workers and vulnerable Canberrans.
“On International Cleaners Day, we acknowledge this hard work by thanking the cleaners at Canberra Hospital, University of Canberra Hospital, Calvary Public Hospital and right across our health system including Walk-in and community health centres,” Ms Stephen-Smith said.
“We cannot overstate how valuable cleaners are to the success of the entire health system and our community,” she said.
Ms Stephen-Smith said that at the height of the pandemic, cleaners had been asked to increase cleaning of high-touchpoint surfaces as well as at entrances and lobbies.
She said cleaners had also provided speciality infectious cleaning in impacted COVID-19 wards and for all patient-related mobile equipment.
“Over this period, the workload of our cleaning staff increased significantly to make sure our front line of defence was strong and effective, day and night,” she said.
“Cleaners provided specialty cleaning at our Respiratory Assessment Clinic at Weston Creek and provided extra resources to clean ACT Ambulance Service vehicles that were used to transport suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients to the Canberra Hospital.”
Ms Stephen-Smith said the cleaners had provided cleaning services to Transport Canberra buses which were used to shuttle passengers from repatriation flights to the Canberra Hospital and provided additional Infection Prevention and Control Training for all cleaning staff.
