Hospitals clean-up to cost £3.7m

Millions of pounds are being spent on cleaning initiatives

A hospital trust is spending millions of pounds tackling superbugs to avoid the possibility of stiff fines.

Bradford's Royal Infirmary and St Luke's hospital in the city are having £3.7m pumped into cleaning measures and other initiatives to meet targets.

Both hospitals have embarked on a "massive programme" of cleaning and screening to contain the MRSA and Clostridium difficile (C. diff) bugs.

The annual targets are set by Bradford and Airedale Primary Care Trust.

National targets were set in 2004 by the then Health Secretary John Reid to halve the number of cases of the superbug infections by March 2008.

If the hospitals do not meet the targets they can be fined by the trust.

Each year new targets are issued to each hospital with the aim of keeping local rates of infection under control.

Matrons' tasks

Now officials at both Bradford hospitals have embarked on a series of measures in the battle to keep the infection rates down.

Patient screening for infection before admission to hospital has been stepped up and matrons are being tasked with monitoring the levels of cleanliness on wards.

In their statement the hospitals said: "From the start of the financial year, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has recorded eight MRSA bloodstream infections.

"Whilst every case of MRSA is regrettable, we are currently more than on target to achieve no more than 22 cases in 2008/09.

"The foundation trust is working extremely hard to combat both MRSA and C. diff and real progress is being made.

"In April, we launched our hospital hygiene turnaround programme - in that time MRSA infections have dropped by almost 40% compared to the same time last year. "