Integrated pest management programme in hospital environment

Urban pests are known to infest health service facilities, especially in a warm, wet neotropical climate. In practice, pest control services for health service facilities are generally outsourced and in most cases are not properly monitored. To address this problem, an integrated pest management (IPM) programme was developed at a hospital in the municipality of Botucatu, state of Sao Paulo, Brazil, by the infection control committee. The method of control applied used spreadsheet pest reports to monitor the presence of vectors. These reports were forwarded to the committee and used to implement several actions of integrated pest control. In 2011, a total of 183 occurrences were recorded by the infection control committee, 5% lower than the number of incidents recorded in 2010, the first year of integrated pest control. In 2012, the total number of occurrences decreased to 159 events, demonstrating the IPM effects. Three years after the implementation of the programme, the predominant pests in the hospital were scorpions (30%), ants (19%) and spiders (16%), with Tityus serrulatus, Paratrechina longicornis and Loxosceles sp as the predominant species, respectively. The presence of scorpions in a hospital environment is not documented in the literature, although these animals are common in urban ecosystems. These results demonstrate that integrated pest control in hospitals is effective and should be conducted on a continuous basis. We suggest the use of this approach by all health services located in neotropical environments.