SCOTLAND must "up the ante" in the fight against hospital superbugs, with a greater focus on deadly infections such as Clostridium difficile, the health secretary told NHS staff yesterday.
In an ambitious £54 million plan to tackle illnesses which infect thousands of patients every year, Nicola Sturgeon said that people were experiencing unacceptable distress because of bugs such as MRSA.
And she announced a raft of measures to red
uce infections which affect almost one in ten hospital patients in Scotland.
Experts and campaigners welcomed the plans, but called for more isolation facilities.
The plans will see a massive increase in funding to tackle bugs, which, until now, has been set at around £5 million a year. Over the next three years, the extra money will be used to introduce MRSA screening for patients going into hospital.
The Scottish Government has set aside £7 million for a one-year pilot of the programme in 2008-9, followed by £16 million a year to roll it out nationally from 2009-10 onwards.
Ms Sturgeon also announced a new C difficile reference lab had been set up at Glasgow's Stobhill Hospital to speed up the diagnosis of patients and start the correct treatment more quickly. Samples previously had to be sent to Wales.
Last month, The Scotsman revealed that deaths caused by C difficile rose by more than 60 per cent in Scotland in a year, up to 164 people in 2006 compared to 100 in 2005.
Ms Sturgeon also announced the government's "healthcare-associated infections" task force would develop new strategies to treat patients with C difficile and other infections to ensure the use of best procedures.
Building on measures to improve hand hygiene, Ms Sturgeon said all hospitals would be expected to achieve at least 90 per cent compliance during spot-checks by Health Protection Scotland. An audit in September showed compliance stood at 79 per cent.
Ms Sturgeon said the plans were about "upping the ante" in the fight against superbugs. She added: "It is not acceptable that we have distressed patients and families who have to cope with illness [and] infections through no fault of their own."
The health secretary also said she would ask Health Facilities Scotland, which monitors hospitals' cleaning standards, to review the targets to see if they could be "toughened up". And she said she expected to see year-on-year decreases in infections from now on. She added: "We are never going to eradicate infections, but our focus has to be on preventing cases emerging in hospitals."
Dr Jane Lolley, deputy chairwoman of the BMA's Scottish consultants committee, said "rigorous" hand hygiene was the most effective way to prevent infection. But she warned: "It is important we assess the impact on hospital admissions and availability of appropriate beds for patients who register positive for MRSA before introducing the [screening] scheme Scotland-wide."
The full article contains 486 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
