Hospital superbug on rise despite campaigns
By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor Daily Telegraph
Around 60,000 people in Britain could be infected this year with the most widespread hospital superbug despite campaigns to tackle the problem, new figures out today show.
In the first three months of this year 15,592 people over the age of 65 were infected with Clostridium difficile, a two per cent rise on the same period last year. The bug takes hold in the guts of patients who have been given antibiotics and causes thousands of deaths. There were a total of 55,634 cases of C.Diff in 2006. The new figures from the Health Protection Agency show rates of the other major health care associated infection, MRSA, are dropping. There was a 6.4 per cent fall in the three months up to March 2007, with a total of 1,444 bloodstream infections reported in England compared with 1,542 in the last quarter. The full-year data shows there has been a 10 per cent drop in the number of MRSA cases.
Between April 2006 and March 2007, 6,378 cases of MRSA were reported, compared with 7,096 for the previous year.
The Chief Medical Officer highlighted the need for patients to challenge their doctors to wash their hands
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