Since Friday 21 February a number of actions have taken place to reduce any residual risk to patients and staff following potential risk of contamination, from the removal of redundant water pipes, of the hot water supply in the tower block of Raigmore Hospital.
Additional pasteurisation measures have continued and as a precautionary measure, filters have been fitted to all showers and hot water taps.
A water sampling programme is in progress and results are expected to be returned over the next two weeks. Until the full results are available these contingency measures will remain in place.
Standard practice for an incident which involves potential water contamination is to test for Legionella and Pseudomonas. Routine water sampling already takes place and before this incident, were clear.
We take the safety of our patients and staff very seriously and these measures ensure the risk to them remains very low. As a precaution we have written to all patients that were in the hospital at the time to advise they contact their GP or out-of-hours service as they normally would do if they have any new symptoms, including a high temperature or flu-like illness, and inform their GP they were in Raigmore Hospital during this incident.
We are very sorry for any worry this may cause our patients and we will continue to monitor and assess the risks on a regular basis.