Gigi is a four-wheeled robot that can zap germs in a room using pulses of ultraviolet light that's 25,000 times more powerful than sunlight in killing viruses. After being brought to patient rooms at St. Joseph Hospital, it began blasting ultraviolet lights that can automatically kill microbes and make the room germ-free.
It resembles R2D2 of 'Starwars' but is skinnier and taller. Actually, these robots are being utilized in three military hospitals and hundreds of other hospitals wherein they clean the surfaces of rooms to become pathogen-free. They are responsible in the reduced rates of nosocomial infections in hospitals.
They send out 1.5 pulses per second in a three meter radius. They are more effective than manually washing or scrubbing the walls of the room with bleach or disinfectants. They utilize a non-toxic gas called xenon to create ultraviolet rays that eliminate germs faster and thoroughly than human cleaning.
Alton Dunham, a spokesman for Langley Air Force Base, which acquired one of the robots in October, said, "The robot is currently part of our Ebola mitigation strategy, but will be used across the hospital to combat a variety of other pathogens known to cause hospital acquired infections."
Dr. Ray Casciari, a pulmonary disease specialist at the St. Joseph Hospital, explains, "We can clean and disinfect a room (by hand) to an 85% level, but when we use the ultraviolet light we can clean that room to 99.9%."
The robot is priced at an estimate $104,000 each and can be considered as a potent weapon that can kill viruses including the Ebola virus. It was manufactured by Xenex Disinfection Services of San Antonio, Texas and they see it as the solution to the wide world plaque of Ebola.
The Dallas Hospital where the first man in the United States has died of Ebola, has purchased one robot for disinfection. It was not used during the acute phase of Duncan's disease but later used to disinfect the room to prevent cross-infection to other personnel of the hospital.
Infection control and prevention is essential to curb the outbreak of Ebola. Fighting the pathogens will eventually lead to the eradication of the virus that has caused severe paranoia worldwide and death of more than 5,000 people in West Africa.