RUH Making Great Strides on MRSA, But Government Should Do More

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Wed 20th Apr 2005

Don Foster has visited Bath's Royal United Hospital to see for himself the efforts that are being made to control superbugs like MRSA. Commenting, Don said,

"The RUH are making great strides in dealing with hospital infections, like MRSA, and it's a huge credit to their efforts that they've managed to halve infection rates since last year. Now, for example, there's a disinfectant gel dispenser by every bed and an extra member of staff has been added to the Infection Control Team.

"But it is shocking that across the country there are at least 100,000 infections every year, and that the equivalent of seven and half district general hospitals are filled by people who picked up an infection during their stay in hospital. This hygiene crisis in our hospitals is deadly serious and I believe it is the legacy of Conservative neglect and Labour dither and delay.

"The Tories, in fact, forced hospitals to contract out their cleaning - price was more important than quality, and the result was that standards fell and responsibility for ward cleaning fragmented. But the true level of hospital infections was then unknown because they did not bother to collect the information.

"Under Labour, waiting time targets have become more important than fighting superbugs with almost half of hospital managers saying that Government targets have caused conflicts with their efforts to control infections. Despite the efforts at the RUH, it's clear from my visit that the Infection Control Team (which has to serve several hospitals in the area) ideally needs more staff and more resources.

ENDS.

Notes to Editors

The Liberal Democrats believe that every staff member should have compulsory training in infection control.

They would:

• give doctors and nurses the power to close wards and tackle infections.

• scrap the political targets which get in the way of staff tackling superbugs

• introduce a proper system of monitoring and surveillance of hospital infections. This information can then be fed back to individual clinicians so they can adjust and learn from mistakes they are making within hospitals.