Pennine Acute Trust MRSA figures improving

Date published: 28/09/2007

Cases of the potentially deadly hospital bug MRSA are falling within the Pennine Acute Trust. But national targets for the whole year have already been missed.

Latest figures show the trust — which runs hospitals in Rochdale, Oldham, Bury and North Manchester — had 40 MRSA cases between March and August.

This compares with 54 cases over the same period in 2006, representing a 25 per cent reduction.

However, the national target for the trust is 38 cases for 2007.

For clostridium difficile, figures from the Health Protection Agency give the Trust an average of 1.51 cases per thousand bed days.

The figure is the lowest rate of all hospital trusts in Greater Manchester and lower than the national average of 2.39.

There have been 183 cases between April and August, well below the target of no more than 564 a year.

Louise Dickinson, nurse consultant infection prevention and control, said: "Staff at all levels have been working extremely hard to tackle all healthcare associated infections, and I strongly believe that the drop in the MRSA figures is a tribute to their efforts.

"It is also important to remember what these figures represent. For MRSA, they include cases where patients have contracted the condition in the community, as it circulates freely.

"Many times, the patient has the condition before being admitted to hospital, where it is then detected.

"Of course, one infection is one too many and we carry out a lot of work to minimise the chance of patients contracting any infections.

"This includes using hospital radio to tell patients to remind their visitors to use the handrub which is in all wards. But we need everyone to play their part in beating the bugs."

New measures have been announced to fight the bugs, including staff wearing short-sleeved uniforms, and trust bosses are waiting to hear whether a bid for additional funding to help with more infection prevention work has been successful.

The Trust will also be holding an infection prevention summit at the end of November and Mrs Dickinson added: "Our work on the uniform issue is going well.

"We report our figures to each board meeting. Information goes straight to the top and has been for months."