Mother catches MRSA from newborn son after doctors failed to tell her he had it

Jenna Hodgkiss, 20, caught a strain of the deadly bug from her baby son Kian after he was discharged from the hospital.

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Now the hospital has been forced to close its neonatal unit to new admissions after six babies tested positive for the aggressive PVL strain of MRSA.

But Miss Hodgkiss is furious after it emerged the hospital did not admit for a month there had been an MRSA outbreak in the unit.

She said: "At no point was I told that MRSA was a possibility and when we took him home we weren't taking any extra precautions.

"If there was even a possibility that it was MRSA we should have been told. We weren't and now it has spread. It has been very badly handled by the hospital."

She and her partner Wayne Jenkinson both caught MRSA from their son and Miss Hodgkiss had to be hospitalised after her condition worsened. The couple have made a formal complaint against the Royal Blackburn Hospital in Lancashire and may take legal action.

The revelation comes just days after it emerged 90 patients had died after an outbreak of clostridium difficile in hospital run by the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells Hospitals Trust.

Rose Gibb resigned from her £150,000 a year post as chief executive but her severance pay of around £250,000 has been blocked by Health Secretary Alan Johnson.

Miss Gibb also faces possible criminal charges over her handling of the worst superbug outbreak in a hospital in in NHS history.

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Jenna Hodgkiss of Accrington, Lancs said her son was born on September 15 and was discharged from hospital after just a few days.

But Kian developed an infection in his groin and had to go back to the hospital where a doctor took a swab and found the baby had a strain of MRSA.

But instead alerting the young mother her son had the bug, which can be deadly if it gets into the blood stream, the hospital gave her an antibiotic cream and sent them both home.

When Miss Hodgkiss developed an abscess in her chest after breastfeeding she realised the infection was more serious and the hospital finally revealed her son had caught the superbug and it had been transmitted to her.

Tests carried out on the legs and groin area of her partner Wayne Jenkinson also confirmed he was suffering from MRSA.

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Professor Richard James of the University of Nottingham, an expert in healthcare associated infections, said the family should have been told Kian was carrying the MRSA bug.

He said: "It is very important for people to know what is happening because this strain can be spread very easily from nurses to children and between family members.

"PVL is very dangerous and the fact is that people may have been in the ward just before this discovery was made and be unaware that they are carrying it around.

"The secrecy is a big problem. Everything should have been kept above board."

Tony Field, from patients' group MRSA Support, said the hospital should have kept the public better informed.

He said: "Hospitals always worry about frightening people but not knowing what's going on is even worse."

But Rineke Schram, medical director for East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, defended the decision to send the couple home.

"MRSA on a normal healthy individual does not need hospitalisation - they can normally be treated by their GP with antibiotics.

"Similarly, if a baby is found to have colonised MRSA on their skin and the organism is not in the blood stream or other tissue, then there is no need for hospitalisation," she said.

The infected infants from the neonatal unit are not said to be seriously ill and are being treated in separate areas.