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Superbug 'czar' targets London's dirty hospitals
Amy Iggulden, Health Correspondent24 Oct 2007
A superbug czar has been hired in London to drive deadly infections out of the health service.
Colin Ovington has vowed to halt the spread of stomach bug Clostridium difficile and halve rates of hospital infection MRSA.
The former nurse was appointed amid growing national concern that hospitals are failing to meet targets to reduce infection on their premises.
Cases of C. difficile are on the rise and, despite improvements in dealing with MRSA, some 1,200 patients contracted it in the year to April.
Mr Ovington, the first "infection turnaround director", will monitor performance at every London trust and order managers of unhygienic hospitals to clean up their act.
The move comes weeks after a report into the C. difficile scandal at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, where 91 patients died from the bug because of dirty wards and poor care.
Mr Ovington was previously director of infection control and nursing at the former Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham, a major acute trust.
He said he would fight "passionately" to make sure fewer patients contract infections in hospital.
"If that means me going in [to hospitals] and turning their commodes upside down to see how clean they are, or seeing how clean their wards are and asking what products they use, then I will."
He has already ordered trusts to examine the report into the failings at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells and prove they are not making the same mistakes.
The Healthcare Commission, the national watchdog, found a list of errors and bad practice with nurses telling patients in need of the lavatory to "go in their beds" and leaving them in soiled sheets. Poor standards may have contributed to as many as 331 dying.
Mr Ovington said: "I have asked [trusts] to measure themselves against the report, look at the criticisms and to make sure that it won't happen [in London]. I would be surprised if we don't find some of it, but I would be surprised if we find it all. I would like to think we won't find the worst."
Last week, a quarter of trusts across the country - including 19 in London - were criticised by the watchdog over failing hygiene standards.
Reader views (3)
The NHS has become money making machine for those in charge, they do not appear to interested in health issues,until you review the integrity of those at the top things will never change.
All the news consist of today is of people at the top and goverment ministers plundering our national wealth, retiring, then passing the job on to one of the old boys network.
- M Bantges, Lincoln uk, 26/10/2007 08:26
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The public need to be able to make suggestions and complain when they see things that shouldn't happen in hospital without feeling that their loved ones are at risk because they spoke out.
Several years ago I saw a member of staff in a green coat lifting the lid of a pedal bin in the intensive care unit to use it. Pedal bins have pedals to avoid touching by hand BUT if they do not work then this bad habit follows.
Is there a quick and efficient method of dealing with problems like this or does it have to be reported in triplicate ... and is a bother ... and people get fed up reporting ...because nothing ever happens?
Also there is often a manic polishing of floors but no wiping down of handrails on stairs and around wards and other places where those recovering in hospital place their hands for support. Drapes around the beds as well - how often are those cleaned?
Staff travel on public transport in uniform. Bring back the laundries and make sure that there are clean changing facilities and free laundry facilities for staff.
Make sure that doorplates are also regularly washed and that there are the right kind of taps so that they can be turned off and on without using hands. Otherwise washed hands can be contaminated before leaving a room.
And what about the blood pressure monitor which is rolled around from person to person without cleaning and then attached to a finger which may have just been used to pick a nose - just where MRSA likes to live?
- Philippa, London, 25/10/2007 09:57
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Just what we need another council jobsworth making 100k a year sending emails.
He wont make a blind bit of difference.
Keep voting Labour though, you know it makes sense.
- Marvin Hagler, Paris, 24/10/2007 17:27
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