Fig. 1

Colony forming units on student’s personal or medical equipment items pre- and post-disinfection. Cleaning personal medical equipment reduces the titre of cultivatable bacteria. Student’s personal or medical equipment items were swabbed pre- and post-disinfection. Columbia horse blood agar plates were inoculated with these swabs, incubated for 18–24 h at 37 °C and the CFUs were counted. CFU counts were binned into the categories: TNTC > 101–340, CFU > 11–100, CFU > 1–10, CFU < 1–10 (no growth; NG) and a two-sided frequency histogram plotted of the results