Deaths from hospital superbug Clostridium Difficile quadruple
Pastor Dale Morgan
Deaths from hospital superbug Clostridium Difficile quadruple*
Health Correspondent Laura Donnelly
Last updated: 1:58 AM BST 18/05/2008
The number of deaths in Britain linked to the potentially deadly
superbug Clostridium difficile has quadrupled in just five years, a
report will warn next week.
More than 6,000 people died in 2006 after becoming infected with the gut
infection in hospitals across England and Wales - a more than four-fold
rise compared with 2001 figures, the Office of National Statistics will say.
Meanwhile, the number of deaths linked to MRSA rose by more than one
third, with the infection mentioned on almost 1,700 death certificates
in 2006.
The figures, due to be published on Thursday, follow an admission by the
Department of Health's most senior experts in infection control that the
main reason for a 50-fold increase in cases of Clostridium difficile in
less than two decades is the failure of hospitals to follow hygiene
rules drawn up 14 years ago.
Research by the Liberal Democrats found half of hospital trusts still do
not put infected patients in their own rooms, while just one in five
puts aside dedicated isolation wards in case of an outbreak.
Last year more than 50,000 people in England and Wales were infected
with the infection, which is often triggered by a course of antibiotics.
Although the elderly are most vulnerable to C. difficile, one in five
cases involves those below the age of 65.
Infection experts said the Government had prioritised targets and
finances at the expense of safety.
Dr Mark Enright, professor of microbiology at London's Imperial College,
said hospitals often suffered the worst outbreaks when managers were
afraid to miss targets requiring emergency patients to be admitted
within four hours, even if wards were overcrowded or harbouring infection.
The worst-ever outbreak of the disease, at hospitals run by Maidstone
and Tunbridge Wells trust, killed 90 people in 2005 and 2006.
An independent investigation said pressure to meet waiting targets was
one of the reasons the crisis spiralled out of control.
Prof Hugh Pennington, emeritus professor of bacteriology at Aberdeen
University, said patients across Britain had paid a heavy price for the
collective failure of hospitals and governments to take infection seriously.
"The failure to invest in proper isolation facilities was wrong; too
many people have suffered and perished as a result," he said.
Health spokesman Norman Lamb said two successive governments had failed
to ensure recommendations from their own experts were followed.
He criticised the current prime minister for introducing
"headline-grabbing gimmicks with little scientific value", such as the
recent "one off" deep-clean of all hospitals, and a new short-sleeves
uniform policy, instead of ensuring that hospitals were detecting and
isolating infected patients.
C.diff is a spore-forming bacterium which exists in the gut of up to
three per cent of healthy adults, but can cause illness when antibiotics
disturb the balance of the bacteria, causing diarrhoea and sometimes
severe inflammation of the bowel, which can be life-threatening.
Recently, the rate of infections has begun to slow, with a drop of 8 per
cent in the latest quarterly figures for C. difficile, and a 30 per cent
decrease in cases of MRSA over a year.