Shared wards must go to wipe out superbugs warns the health czar

Lord Warner said new-build hospitals should contain only separate rooms - the one sure way of stopping potentially fatal bugs such as

Clostridium difficile. In an interview with the Evening Standard, the chairman of London's NHS Provider Development Agency said: "If you have people with highly infectious conditions it's difficult

to isolate. Our old Nightingale wards are out of date.

"We have to own up to the fact that if you use your beds with 90 per cent occupancy you are making cross infection control more difficult.

"C.diff is home-grown and that is down to hygiene in the hospital. It's very difficult to isolate if you have patients on wards."

Lord Warner's comments come as figures published today reveal superbug infection rates are declining.

Only 1,407 patients in London aged 65 and over caught superbugs in the three months from July to September last year, according to the Health Protection Agency statistics.

This compares with 1,677 cases in the same quarter in 2006.

There has been a fall of nearly a third in cases of MRSA.

Barts and King's College Hospital are among those with the highest infection rates. However, this does not mean they are dirtier than other hospitals as they treat far higher numbers of patients than other London hospitals.

Imperial College had the highest number of cases of C. diff infection but the trust said its five hospitals treated more than 160,000 patients. The decline of superbug infections in the capital is mirrored across the country, with 1,072 MRSA cases and 10,734 cases of C.diff over the last quarter.

But experts warned that despite

the encouraging figures, healthcare managers should not be complacent.

Dr Roger Gross, the agency's London regional director, said: "The figures for both these health-associated infections, although encouraging, show there is still much infection control work to be done across London, especially in C.diff."

Norman Lamb, Liberal Democrat health spokesman, said: "Recent successes are down to the hard work of NHS staff, who are up against enormous pressures to hit targets while keeping their wards infectionfree."

Ministers are still under pressure to improve hospital hygiene standards so patients are not at risk of infection.

The Government has already pledged that all hospitals will be "deep-cleaned" by the end of March. Other zero-tolerance measures include banning doctors from wearing clothing below the elbow.