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John Lister |
Hospitals come under fire from bug inspectors
Whittington, Bart’s are told to clean up
A LEADING health campaigner has accused leading the Whittington and Bart’s hospitals of “chronic under-investment” on hygiene after they received poor ratings for MRSA infections.
John Lister, director of the health pressure group London Emergency, spoke out after annual check-ups found unacceptable levels of infections.
“These two hospitals have really got to get their act together,” he said. “The figures suggest that they have been lax over cleanliness which is not good. Hygiene is far too important to ignore or cut corners.”
The Whittington Hospital Trust was one of just 17 out of 392 Trusts nationwide to “fail” the MRSA indicator with 23 cases in 2008/09 – eight more than its agreed maximum target of 15.
The annual audit of UK hospitals rated Bart’s and the London NHS Trust as having a “weak” overall quality of patient care.
The Trust failed the benchmark indicator of being able to deal with A&E patients within four hours and “underachieved” in the number of incidents of the potentially fatal hospital superbug MRSA.
However, the Whittington confirmed this week there had been no MRSA infections at the hospital for six months.
Director of nursing and clinical development Deborah Wheeler said: “We are delighted to record yet another infection control success. All the staff have pulled together to achieve this great record and we look forward to seeing the efforts and our success continue.”
Peter Morris, chief executive of Bart’s and the London NHS Trust, said: “The weak rating is very disappointing but it was not unexpected, given the operational difficulties the Trust has experienced over the last eighteen months.
“We are now putting our operational difficulties behind us.” |
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Your comments:
The last two years we have seen hospital getting over excited when they find the incidence of MRSA infection reduced. This looks like good news but the authorities do not tell the public about other bacterial infections that have increased.I think we must stop kidding ourselves and accept this problem of antibiotic resistant bacterial infections are all in the increase and short term drop is not anything we must be proud of.With swine flu virus given all the media attention, bacteria have been off the spotlight with a pandemic of its own. "Antibiotic resistance is an international pandemic that compromises the treatment of all infectious diseases," The American Academy of Microbiology published a report saying "A War We Will Not Win".http://www.youtube.com/user/medifix#p/a
Dr. K.M. Srivatsa
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