How Labour let NHS bug 'run wild'

A memo from a top official charged with tackling infections said hospitals considered clostridium difficile – that has killed scores of elderly patients – “an unavoidable fact of life”.

She said that £270million was needed to combat the problem. The Government responded with £50million, topped up with another £50million as public anger grew. The attack comes less than a week after publication of a shocking report into the worst outbreak of clostridium difficile – or C.diff – ever recorded in the NHS.

At least 90 patients died in an outbreak at the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust.

Investigators found the bug had taken such a hold in the filth on hospital wards that the real death toll will never be known.

All the victims were over 65 and the report exposes the degradation they were forced to endure. Kent Police are deciding whether mismanagement by chiefs at Kent and Sus­sex, Pembury and Maidstone hospitals amounted to a criminal act.

The publication of the leaked memo from Liz Woodeson, head of the Department of Health’s infection unit, will add to criticism that the Government failed to tackle the threat seriously until it was too late.

Miss Woodeson warned Patricia Hewitt, then Health Secretary, that “virtually all trusts” were reporting outbreaks. She said: “We suspect some trusts simply see it as an unavoidable fact of hospital life.”

Stressing the need for urgent action, Miss Woodeson recommended that £270million be spent, including £200 million on isolation rooms.

Shadow Health Secretary Andew Lansley said: “Ministers got this advice and they ignored it.

“The Government’s complacency and inaction in the face of rising numbers of infections is an outrage.”

Official figures show that in the first three months of 2007 more than 15,500 patients caught C.diff.

According to the Health Protection Agency, that was a rise of almost a quarter on the previous three months.

There are fears that by the end of the year the number of patients infected could pass 60,000, a dramatic increase on the 44,000 cases in 2004.

The Department of Health said: “Hospitals must deliver clean, safe treatment to every patient and to support them to do this we have invested £100million in tackling infections since last November. A further £140 million was recently announced. This issue is a top priority.

“We will deep clean every hospital, ward by ward. We have set uniform rules so that all staff are ‘bare below the elbows’, making sure it is easy for them to wash their hands.

“We will give hospital inspectors the power to close wards if hygiene is not being given enough priority.

“These measures will help to get the performance of all hospitals up to the standard of the best.”

Six people are suffering from C.diff at the Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow, it was revealed at the weekend.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said yesterday that the patients were being treated in an isolation ward.

Another ward at the hospital has been closed to new admissions as three patients have suspected viral

gastroenteritis.

Hugh Pennington, emeritus professor of bacteriology at Aberdeen University, said elderly patients deserved respect in hospitals.

He added: “Preventing infection, along with feeding, cleaning and helping patients with bodily functions, should be right at the top of things nurses should do.

“Somewhere or other we have lost sight of what nurses are meant to do.

“For many the notion of getting s*** on their hands and washing it off again is something to be left to the lowest of the low and if there is no such candidate, they don’t get done.”

Experts stress that tackling C.diff need not be a costly exercise and just requires commonsense.

Mark Enright, a specialist in hospital-acquired infections at Imperial College, London, said: “You wash your hands, wash the beds after patients have been there, you have laundry services working and everything is OK.”

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