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Top e-government news, updated daily, and regular features from the top people in the public sector.
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| Winning war against superbug |
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Superbug rates at Lynn's Queen Elizabeth Hospital are falling dramatically – but staff are still battling to get high levels of one of the most serious infections under control.
MRSA cases at the hospital have dropped by more than half in the last 12 months, putting it in the top of a table released this week by health watchdog, the Health Protection Agency.
But while outbreaks of Clostridium difficile have also fallen at the QEH, high levels of the infection remain – with HPA statistics putting it in the bottom 25 per cent of hospitals.
Bosses say they are "extremely pleased" their superbug rates are tumbling, and are confident cases of C.difficile will continue to fall.
"When I came here the number of C.difficile cases was absolutely dreadful, but they are coming down," said Professor Lynne Liebowitz, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital's consultant microbiologist.
"It is a slow process but what we've done so far is really positive and I'm sure we'll continue to see a decrease,"
She has been waging a war on infections ever since joining the QEH last June, and it's no coincidence infection rates have taken a nose dive since then.
Thanks to introducing improved infection control procedures and discouraging the use of antibiotics, cases of MRSA blood poisoning have dropped from 45 between July 2004 and June 2005 to just 17 between July 2005 and June 2006.
And cases of C.difficile, which can lead to severe diarrhoea and potentially fatal inflammation of the gut, have plummeted from 457 cases to 358 in the same time.
In comparison, HPA figures show 58 cases of MRSA in the year ending March 2006 at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, and 41 at St James Paget Healthcare Trust.
C.difficile infected 344 patients at the N&N between January and December 2005, and 222 at St James Paget.
Prof Liebowitz pointed out that many patients with C.difficile had the infection on admission to the QEH, and did not contract it while being treated.
She also said the QEH had managed to reduce its C.difficile cases when infections in the community had risen by more than 30 in a year, and nationally by 17.2 per cent.
The HPA's Dr Georgina Duckworth added: "It is important to remember that not all healthcare-associated infections are preventable.
"Some infections are the price we pay for advances in medicine which allow patients to survive when they would have been unlikely to survive their illness a few years ago." |
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