Abstract

GEA-IZQUIERDO, Enrique. Legionnaires' disease prevention protocol performance in public buildings . Rev. salud pública [online]. 2009, vol.11, n.1, pp.100-109. ISSN 0124-0064.

Objective Studying the relationship between fulfilment of royal decree 865/2003 and decree 287/2002 (establishing hygienic-sanitary criteria for preventing and controlling Legionnaires' disease) and risk arising from deficient preventative-hygienic water facility maintenance. Methods This was a descriptive study carried out in the province of Málaga (Spain) on a sample of 214 public buildings using 83 variables and interpreting legislation fulfilment percentages. Risks were measured, clusters defined (related to risk typification) and classic and robust estimators, jack-knife estimation and bootstrap confidence intervals were calculated. Results 11.1 % (irrigation, ESO private centres) and 85.7 % (AFS, secondary education institutions) partial non-fulfilment/breach risks were found. Eighty-two buildings complied with current standards, 130 failed to fulfil them and 2 did not display risk facilities. There was 38 % overall compliance with established norms. Location parameter fulfilment was estimated as being 0.33-0.36 (3336 %) and scale as 0.110.16. Reduced bias jack-knife estimator was 0.35071 (average estimation). Bootstrap confidence interval extremes were 0.26 and 0.47. Conclusion Secondary education institutions represented the least risk due to partial noncompliance and four- and three-star hotels the greatest. Huber estimator was selected as location parameter and NMAD as scale parameter. Regarding the population ratio parameter and sample ratio estimator, it was considered that the jack-knife estimator of reduced bias was unbiased. Confidence intervals based on bootstrap techniques (starting from 0.2trimmed mean sample and a 0.95 confidence coefficient) were very approximate.

Keywords : Prevention; control; risk; legionnaires' disease; public facility.

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