You get sick, you think: Go to the hospital; it’s a good place to go if you’re ill or injured. Problem is, it turns out hospitals are also a great place to become even more ill and even die.

A March 2008 episode of the PBS medical panel discussion show Second Opinion revealed some startling figures. Every year in the United States about two million people who enter a hospital leave with an illness they acquired during their stay, a conundrum known as hospital-acquired infections. Even worse, around 100,000 people who contract a hospital-acquired illness die from it.

It makes sense on the one hand: Hospitals are places where the infectiously ill all come together under one roof to be treated. All of those germs, bacteria and viruses don’t just hang around the room where their ill host lays under treatment. They kind of make their way around the building. The other way to look at the dilemma of hospital-acquired illnesses is that IT’S A HOSPITAL. Fix the problem. A hospital is a place for healing, not a drive-thru for contracting further illness.

Science Daily reports some researchers at the University College London agree. They have produced a film that can be applied to surfaces — say, walls, countertops and floors in hospital rooms — and is activated when fluorescent light hits it. The preliminary results show that 99.9 percent of E. coli bacteria that comes in contact with the film is killed. This is particularly promising, since MSRA bacteria — a tenacious infection that has become increasingly commonly acquired in hospitals — is easier to kill than E. coli bacteria.

I’m not much of an ardent proponent of antibacterial anything, being more of a devotee of the hygiene hypothesis, but I’m thinking hospitals are an exception to the rule.

Don’t split yet; we’ve got more cool stuff on HowStuffWorks.com:
How MRSA Works
Should antibacterial soap be outlawed?
How can intestinal bacteria like E. coli infect a vegetable like spinach?