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ROSEVILLE (KTXL) — Oakmont High students have been waiting weeks to see Sutter-Roseville Medical Center’s new germ-zapping machine.

“I’m really excited to see how it works and see how well it works,” Oakmont student Lance Berg said.

Allison Gontheir heads infection control at the hospital. She says the staff was excited about the new technology, which uses UV light to disinfect hospital surfaces after staff manually clean them. They couldn’t keep it to themselves.

“We thought, ‘Wow, we really need to share this and let everyone know what we’re doing and expand that into the educational programs,'” Gontheir said.

A perfect opportunity, she says, for Oakmont High School’s Health Science Academy students to learn about the threat of contracting an infection from hospital facilities. Berg says he was surprised to learn how commonly patients get serious illnesses from hospital rooms that aren`t properly sanitized.

“I figured it would be something where one out of 200, one out of 300 patients would get it but we saw some had upwards of 50 percent,” Berg told FOX40.

Monday, the students presented their last two weeks of research on hospital-borne infectious diseases, and then they got their first look at the robot in action.

“I’m the kind of person that every time I get sick I look it, I look up what my symptoms are. So it was kind of cool to learn about a new disease and tie that into the robot,” student Matthew Parachou said.

And thanks to Parachou, after three months zapping germs the robot finally had a name — Melman.

The robot’s namesake is Melman, the germaphobe giraffe from the popular Madagascar animated films.WHAT OTHERS ARE CLICKING ON: 

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