Hospitals' MRSA-free 113 days comes to an end

7:53am Tuesday 29th April 2008

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HOSPITALS in Worcestershire have had a case of MRSA - finally ending their record 113 days without one.

The county's acute hospitals had a case this month, ending the longest stint without the superbug.

The previous case was on December 23 last year. Before this Worcester Acute Hospitals NHS Trust went a further 47 days without a hospital-acquired MRSA infection - one that is diagnosed more than 48 hours after a patient's admission.

Infections diagnosed before this are not classed by the trust as "hospital-acquired" as the patient may have had it before admission.

There were 26 cases of superbug C.difficile across all three acute hospitals last month, nine of them at Worcestershire Royal and the majority, 16 cases, at the Alexandra in Redditch.

The trust is now in discussions to set-up a treatment unit for patients with C.diff to tackle the potentially fatal bug.

The trust won the Infection Control Team of the Year Award 2007/8 for their work to reduce hospital-acquired infections, as reported exclusively in your Worcester News on Friday.

The awards, sponsored by international microbiology specialists Oxoid, aim to recognise and reward the dedicated teams of infection control microbiologists, infection control nurses and doctors striving to make hospitals safer places for staff, patients and visitors.

The awards are judged by a panel of health experts.

Trust chief executive John Rostill said at a board meeting at the Alexandra hospital on Thursday that the award was "an outstanding achievement".

The trust completed its £1.2 million "deep clean", an intensive cleaning programme, before the deadline in March, one of 93 per cent of NHS organisations which met the target.

Mr Rostill said: "I can't help but notice the difference even walking down this corridor to the board room. It looks more clinical. You get the impression of it being much cleaner than it was. It has been money exceptionally well spent.

"I really do hope that we get another influx of money this year. We need the same amount of money for three years running."

At the meeting, matrons also mentioned a new "bed space cleaning trial", involving a specialist housekeeping team which cleans beds when a patient is discharged.