Mr Peter Teska1
1Diversey, Fort Mill, United States
Teska has presented at a number of Infection Prevention events in the United States and internationally to Healthcare audiences in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Finland, Japan, Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland, Turkey, and the UK.
In this presentation, the learner will be exposed to a series of studies that have investigated the emergence of Candida auris as a human pathogen, the prevalence of C. auris on environmental surfaces, its ability to produce environmental biofilms, and the challenges in killing it in the environment.
Candida auris is an important emerging human pathogen that is highly drug resistant. First identified in Japan in 2009, the organism has since spread around the world and causes a significant number of infections each year. C. auris has proven more difficult to kill in standardized testing than other Candida strains, such as Candida albicans, but claims on disinfectants are now starting to appear in the US and will likely appear on disinfectant product labels in Australia in 2020.
The CDC and WHO have proposed containment strategies for C. auris and since it is commonly found in the environment, meticulous environmental cleaning is one of the strategies used to control its spread. Biofilms are significantly protective for microorganisms and C. auris is a known biofilm producer, creating some questions about whether the standard planktonic tests are appropriate in estimating efficacy in the real world. Ideally a dry surface biofilm standard would be developed that would allow for testing of organisms such as C. auris both in planktonic and biofilm forms, but currently there is no US-EPA or EN standard test for dry surface biofilm claims.
Biography:
Peter Teska currently works for Diversey Inc. as the Global Infection Prevention Application Expert. In his role he leads Diversey’s external research, provides customer support on Infection Prevention issues related to environmental hygiene, writes technical literature and documents, presents at Infection Prevention events, monitors the scientific literature related to environmental hygiene, provides technical support to the portfolio teams in development of innovations, and provides training to Diversey’s employees and customers. He has worked as a supplier to the Healthcare industry for 24+ years, having worked in a range of technical and product marketing roles in his career.