One of the major public health problems is Health Care Related Infections (HAI). The entry
and permanence of applicants in health institutions exposes them to a multiplicity of pathogenic
microorganisms, especially in hospitals, which can aggravate the patient's condition, enabling
cross-infection by these microorganisms. The frequency of infections caused by fungi has
increased considerably and several factors have contributed to this increase, such as the invasion
and proliferation of fungi into biological systems in hospital environments, making it a matter
of great importance in public health. One of the ways to keep the hospital environment safe and
control environmental contamination is by cleaning the hospital units, following protocols and
standards for hygienic sanitary products. Therefore, the objective of this work was to verify the
diversity and risk analysis through the identification of public fungi obtaining objects before
and after the standard operating procedure (SOP) of cleaning and disinfection of a hospital
located in the North of Tocantins. A total of 48 were collected from eight objects from each
researched environment: emergency care (ER), infirmary and semi-intensive unit. The
collection was carried out in two moments, before and after the sanitation and cleaning
procedures of the place, in the period from February to May 2021. The microbiological
identifications were carried out by the association of the macroscopic characteristics of the
fungi cultivated in Petri dishes and microscopic, by using the slide microculture technique.
Fungi were preserved using the Castellani technique. There was growth of filamentous fungi in
all analyzed both before and after cleaning the environment, totaling 191 Colony Forming Units
(CFU) and the genus of 179 CFU was identified. The objects belonging to the emergency room
were the most contaminated, followed by those from the semi-intensive unit and the least
contaminated were those from the ward with percentages of 40%, 34.% and 26% of the total of
fungi, respectively, but there was no statistical difference significant. Several fungi belonging
to genera that have pathogenic representatives were isolated, both before and after cleaning,
totaling 13 being: Acremonium, Alternaria, Aspergillus, Cladosporium, Curvularia, Fusarium,
Geotrichum, Microsporum, Paecilomyces, Penicillum, Rhizopus, Sporothryx and
Trichophyton. There was no statistically significant difference between the treatments assumed
before and after cleaning according to the student t test (p=0.3435). According to alpha diversity
calculations, diversity and uniformity were higher in the emergency room (1-D = 0.8370 and
H´ = 2.0090) and fungal species richness was higher in the ward (DMg = 2.8120). The most
frequent genera were Aspergillus (32.0%), Penicillium (22.0%) and Cladosporium (17.0%).
The object telephone in the semi-intensive unit was the most contaminated among all those
sampled before and after cleaning with 10 CFU each sample. It is concluded that the hospital
environment surveyed has a large amount of environmental fungi and it is suggested that control
and monitoring measures should be reinforced by the hospital infection control teams to prevent
microorganisms from remaining in the hospital environment and causing cross infections to
affect mainly immunosuppressed patients in the patients of that hospital.
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