Superbug hospital infections fall in England

The level of hospital-acquired infections in England is continuing to fall, official figures showed on Wednesday, suggesting that government-ordered measures to tackle potentially deadly superbugs are working.

The Health Protection Agency said cases of Clostridium difficile and MRSA blood poisoning had both fallen in the latest quarter, July to September 2007.

The figures will be welcome news to Health Secretary Alan Johnson, who is under pressure to show success in reducing superbug infections in National Health Hospitals.

A 50 million pound deep-clean of hospitals is under way and medics have been ordered to wears short-sleeved tunics to prevent accidental superbug infection.

Next month a nationwide publicity campaign will stress that antibiotics are ineffective against many common ailments and that their indiscriminate use can boost the spread of antibiotic-resistant infections.

The HPA said cases of Clostridium difficile had fallen by 21 percent in the third quarter of 2007 to 10,734 in patients over 65, and were down 16 percent on the same period the year before.

But it said the figures should be treated with caution as hospitals were due to revise the data to account for repeat infections, currently treated as a single case.

There was an 18 percent fall in cases of MRSA blood poisoning in the third quarter to 1,072, down 35 percent on the same period in 2006.

"This continued decrease in MRSA bloodstream infections is a major achievement against the seemingly unstoppable rise that we saw throughout the 1990s," said Georgia Duckworth, head of the HPA's healthcare-associated infection department.

"Latest figures show a continuing downward trend, despite a backdrop of increasing workloads and complex patient needs," she added.

The government has allocated an extra 270 million pounds a year to improve hospital cleanliness and reduce superbug infections.

Hospitals are due to start MRSA screening of patients coming for non-emergency procedures from April, and for all emergency admissions over the next three years.