Ambulances 'facing MRSA pressure'

Some 60,000 patients travel in ambulances each day

Increasing demand for ambulances has made it more difficult to ensure high hygiene standards in the battle against MRSA, a senior NHS official says.

There has been a 120% rise in 999 calls, Ambulance Service Association chief executive Richard Diment said.

While extra training and cleaning standards had been introduced, he said staff still had limited time to clean.

There have been reports of MRSA infections from ambulances, but a lack of official research, Mr Diment said.

Speaking at the Patient Association's Clean Hospitals Summit in London, Mr Diment said: "We hear of stories in the media about people getting infections from ambulances.

"But what we need is more research to establish exactly what the risk is."

Clean

He said it was likely the risk was generally low, but the ambulance service needs evidence on how often vehicles should have a "deep clean" - whereby they are taken out of service to be disinfected.

Mr Diment, whose association represents 33 of the 34 ambulance services in the UK, said in the current climate it was not practical to clean ambulances in such a way after every patient journey.

Nearly 60,000 patient journeys are made a day in the UK with ambulance crews making 15 journeys in each eight to 10-hour shift.

It is just like in hospitals with beds and wards, there is not enough time to clean properly between jobs Tony Field, of MRSA Support

He said a balance had to be struck if the service was going to react to every call, but added the issue was of utmost importance.

"Hospital-acquired infections cause misery for patients," he added.

Hospital superbugs are one of the key battlegrounds in the election following an escalation in the problem over recent years.

Deaths linked to the superbug doubled between 1999 and 2003 to nearly 1,000 a year, according to a report by the Office for National Statistics in February.

But the government claimed last month it had turned the corner after latest figures showed that the numbers treated for the infection fell by 6% in the last year.

Tony Field, chairman of MRSA Support, a group for victims, said he thought ambulances were part of the problem.

"They are not clean enough. Quite often they are not sterilised between patients.

"It is just like in hospitals with beds and wards, there is not enough time to clean properly between jobs."

At the end of the two-day summit on Friday, delegates will present politicians with a list of challenges to reduce the rate of MRSA infections.

Organised by the Patients' Association, delegates at the summit will present politicians with a list of challenges.

But the organisers say the event will be more than just a talking shop.

They say the association will present politicians and civil servants with a list of challenges on MRSA, and they will monitor to see if changes are made in the following one-hundred days.