UK Superbug deaths up 30-fold in decade
Pastor Dale Morgan
UK Superbug deaths up 30-fold in decade*
By Laura Donnelly, Health Correspondent, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 11:36pm BST 12/05/2007
A huge rise in deaths linked to the superbug MRSA in just over a decade
has been revealed in official figures.
The number of death certificates that name the infection as a
"contributory factor" has soared from 51 cases in 1993 - the first year
in which records were kept - to 1,629 in 2005, a 30-fold increase.
Experts and campaigners believe that even this figure is only the tip of
the iceberg because many hospitals try to avoid listing MRSA as a cause
of death if they can find alternative explanations.
Ministers admitted the scale of the rise after being questioned in the
Commons last week. Officials sought to explain the figures by saying
that many deaths involving MRSA were those of "patients who were
admitted to hospital because they were already seriously ill with
another condition".
Three years ago when John Reid was the health secretary, he pledged to
halve the MRSA rate by 2008. In January, however, a leaked memo revealed
not only that the deadline would not be met but that the target might
never be achieved. The memo admitted that a certain level of MRSA was
unavoidable, but could not specify what that level was.
Britain has one of the worst MRSA rates in Europe, ranking only above
Malta, Romania, Cyprus and Portugal.
The latest figures show that, after peaking in 2004/05, the number of
infections is beginning to drop. In the last quarter of 2006, the latest
recorded figure, the number of cases fell by 7 per cent to 1,542.
However, the statistics only cover cases where the infection is carried
in the bloodstream. Experts say these account for less than 10 per cent
of all MRSA infections and exclude thousands of cases affecting organs
or wounds.
Dr Mark Enright, a microbiologist at Imperial College, London said: "I
would expect that the death figures substantially under-report the true
situation. In a lot of cases, MRSA doesn't make it on to the death
certificate when it should. Instead you see organ failure, pneumonia, or
sepsis.
"Often it is hard to say exactly how much of a contribution MRSA caused
to the death, but there is a tendency not to include it."
Dr Enright, who accused the Government of focusing on waiting lists and
NHS targets at the expense of infection control, described the rise in
MRSA over the past 12 years as "startling". He said that neither the
number of deaths officially linked to MRSA nor the rate of bloodstream
infections provided a full picture.
"I would say bloodstream infections account for 10 per cent of the
infections in total," he said. "If people tested every infection, the
rate would be far, far higher."
Prof Hugh Pennington, emeritus professor of bacteriology at Aberdeen
University, said that the best chance of stopping the spread of MRSA had
come in the early Nineties when the number of cases began to rise
sharply. However, such was the focus on "pushing patients through the
system" that the government at the time had failed to invest in
isolation facilities and screening systems, which were key to tackling
the bug.
John Howard Crews, 50, died in hospital in December 2003, three months
after suffering a heart attack. His death certificate recorded the cause
of death as pneumonia and cardiac failure. However, his stepson Derek
Butler, who witnessed the last six hours of his stepfather's life in
which he was "coiled up in a foetal position with his legs turned blue",
was convinced an infection was to blame. When he and his mother asked
questions of Blackpool Victoria Hospital, it emerged that Mr Howard
Crews's lungs were "profusely infected with MRSA" and that the infection
had been identified a week before his death.
Mr Butler, who chairs the campaign group MRSA Action UK, said his
stepfather had been betrayed by the Government's failure to tackle
soaring rates of infection. "Tony Blair told the British people that
they had 24 hours to save the NHS," he said. "He had the opportunity to
do it and he failed."
Andrew Lansley, shadow health secretary, said the Government's "target
culture" and the resulting high bed occupancy rates had allowed MRSA to
become "endemic".
"Evidence shows that bed occupancy rates remain too high, with many
nurses still reporting that there isn't time to clean beds thoroughly
between patients," he said.
Katherine Murphy, of the Patients Association, said: "We need more
accurate reporting.
"We hear time and time again of cases where there is MRSA but the death
certificate says pneumonia, or a chest infection, and it is only when
relatives start asking questions that they find out that MRSA was present."