Clean Up Our Hospitals Now

Despite health minister Ben Bradshaw’s upbeat assessment of the "improvements" in infection control in hospitals, it is a scandal that, across Britain, more than one in four health trusts still fail to meet minimum standards for cleanliness.

Mr Bradshaw, the MP for Exeter, welcomed the fact that the number of trusts failing to comply with more than seven hygiene standards had fallen from the 15 recorded last year.

He is presumably less pleased that more than a quarter of trusts don’t keep facilities clean, don’t have adequate infection control and don’t follow guidelines on decontaminating reusable equipment.

He also cannot be satisfied to learn that the situation is even worse in the Westcountry – the region for which he has special responsibility in Government – with almost half the health trusts here at risk of losing their licence to treat patients unless they clean up their acts fast.

Talking up supposed improvements to the cleanliness regimes in hospitals is not the same as actually delivering them. And while Mr Bradshaw might be perfectly justified in highlighting the best bits from the latest Healthcare Commission report, his positive presentation is not the whole story.

Of course, no-one is suggesting that healthcare workers are not doing their best or that most are not as appalled as the patients by the number of deaths in hospital attributed to the superbugs MRSA and the C diff. Too often, however, it is the regimes under which they have to operate which cause the problem, rather than any shortcomings among the staff.

Few issues are of greater concern to NHS patients that the fear that when they go into hospital, they may be putting themselves at risk from a superbug. And with 8,000 deaths linked to either MRSA or C diff and these latest figures revealing one in four hospital trusts failing to meeting hygiene standards, those fears are clearly well-founded.

The picture is patchy and many people about to go into hospital have nothing to fear. But while the figures are as bad as this and improvements as depressing slow in coming, the risk of a hospital- acquired infection will continue to add to the already overburdened worries of patients. There can be few higher priorities for ministers than making our hospitals clean. And with these results from the Healthcare Commission, there is no room for complacency.

Vital screening

DESPITE the bad news above, it is heartening today to be able to report the excellent results achieved at the breast-screening unit at Derriford Hospital, which is providing a great service in the early detection of breast cancer.

The unit, which screens women from East Cornwall and West Devon, scores top marks in the latest set of results, giving women who use the service confidence that they are being given accurate information and that, if they have any sign of cancer, it will be correctly and swiftly identified so it can be dealt with.

What is less satisfactory is that some other units score less well and – by comparison – are letting their patients down. It is inevitable when you start to judge one health provider against another that discrepancies will be revealed.

All efforts should be put into ironing out the shortfalls elsewhere, so that everyone comes up to the high standards all women have a right to expect.

Profiteering?

IT IS a fact of market economics that when goods or services are in demand, the price tends to rise and when no-one wants them, it falls. But even taking that rule into account, it is hard to justify the pounds9 gallon of petrol, seen on sale in Devon yesterday.

The garage proprietor, who has priced both petrol and diesel at pounds1.99 a litre in the wake of the tanker drivers’ strike, claimed he was trying to persuade drivers to buy a little less, thus conserving supplies for more customers. Yet if that was his motive, why not simply restrict every motorist to, say, no more than pounds20 worth at the normal price? To ramp up prices like this looks suspiciously like profiteering from the misfortune of others.

(c) 2008 Western Morning News, The Plymouth (UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.