Borough hospitals beating the bugs

Emily Cole

15 May 2008

BOROUGH hospitals are successfully stamping out hospital superbugs, according to new figures released this week.
Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust, the organisation in charge of Solihull, Heartlands and Good Hope hospitals, has managed to reduce MRSA cases by 18 per cent across the Trust.
Latest figures released by the Health Protection Agency reveal that hospital trusts in the West Midlands as a whole reported a drop in new MRSA and C diff cases.
The statistics state that between October and December 2006 there were 184 MRSA cases, whereas there were only 137 during the same period in 2007.
C diff cases were down from 1,725 between October and December 2006 to 1,202 during the same space of time last year.
Lisa Dunn, Hospital Director at Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust, said that Solihull Hospital has one of the lowest rates of hospital acquired infections in the country.
She added: "To keep up these high standards and make sure we are doing everything we can to drive infections down, we have invited the Department of Health to visit us and give us feedback on our processes.
"We are always looking for new ideas and ways to improve and hope this visit will help us learn more best practice to roll out in our hospitals."
Ms Dunn said that the Trust had launched a campaign to raise awareness of infection control issues with the public as residents' support was vital to stop infections being carried into hospitals.
"The key line of defence is good hand hygiene, so for the last few weeks we have had Bug Busters in the main entrances of our hospitals asking visitors to clean their hands before going into wards and clinical areas," she added.
"Members of the public have responded well to the bug busters and we have also introduced a number of other more permanent measures to raise awareness - we hope we can rely on our local community in Solihull to spread these messages so we can work together to tackle hospital acquired infection.”

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