“Too often, after an emergency, when the aid agencies are done, there’s no more funding, and disease simmers,” Michael Murphy, another partner at MASS, told me. “There’s a real chance to end cholera and tuberculosis, but that can only happen with permanent infrastructure. We are building against the hospital trend of the midcentury in the U.S.” He was talking about buildings that “can cause infections and all sorts of other problems.” The idea harks back to colonial hospitals in the developing world, which were open-air buildings constructed around courtyards. In the tuberculosis clinic, MASS’s architects have carved vestibules outside patient rooms, along the balcony and around the edge of the courtyard so nurses and doctors can conduct examinations in fresh air, not in the rooms, where they’re most likely to become infected. For that same reason, cleaning crews can also avoid the rooms and enter patient bathrooms through a separate door, a strategy European infectious-disease hospitals have pioneered.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 15:12:11 +0000
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