Hospital Crackdown Beating Superbug
MRSA cases are down in Huddersfield, UK latest figures show. Hospital bosses say it is because strict measures have been put in place to tackle the super-bug infection. Only 20 cases have been recorded in nine months at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary and Calderdale Royal Hospital.
The drop comes after Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust - which runs the two hospital sites - celebrated a 30% reduction the year before when their MRSA rate dropped from 40 cases in 2004/5 to just 28 in 2005/6. The Trust now looks set to have another record year.
Carole Hallam, lead infection control nurse for the Trust, said: "We have a robust infection prevention and control programme and infection control is given a constant high priority in our Trust. "However, we are never complacent and the work continues across all departments." She said a number of measures had been introduced which included screening patients when they arrived at hospital and moving those found to be MRSA carriers into side rooms.
Alcohol hand gel dispensers at every bedside and training in handwashing had also helped improve the figures.
Greater infection control awareness among both staff and visitors was also helping to keep infection at bay.
The figures come after the Government set all hospital trusts a target in 2004 to halve their MRSA rates by 2008.
A new weapon against MRSA is being developed with more than £3 million of funding from the Wellcome Trust, Britain's leading research charity. Scientists have identified a class of compound that kills the superbug by preventing its ability to divide and multiply. They hope the drugs, code-named CDI 936 cell division inhibitors, will provide a safe alternative to traditional antibiotics. Theoretically they could work against all antibiotic-resistant strains of Staphylococcus bacteria, which include MRSA.
By avoiding the destruction of protective "friendly" bacteria in the gut, which are often targeted accidentally by antibiotics, they may also prevent secondary infections by other bugs. Clostridium difficile, one such bacterium, is becoming an even bigger problem than MRSA after taking advantage of the "open door" provided by antibiotics.
The Wellcome Trust today announced it was pumping £3.5 million into developing the new compounds. The grant to the Oxford-based biotech company Prolysis is one of the first awards from the charity's £91 million Seeding Drug Discovery initiative, which aims to turn promising scientific ideas into practical treatments.
HOSPITAL infections, including MRSA, are said to kill around 5,000 UK patients each year. The MRSA Support Group maintains that the true figure is closer to 20,000. MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, is difficult to treat because of its resistance to antibiotics. It first appeared in the 1960s and new strains emerged in the 1980s that have caused outbreaks of infection in hospitals throughout the world. MRSA most commonly attacks patients who have undergone operations and can be fatal if it triggers blood poisoning.
There were 3,517 reports of blood-stream infections from MRSA in acute NHS trusts between October 2005 and March 2006.
MRSA is most commonly spread via hands and equipment, and sometimes through the environment.
January 15, 2007
By The Huddersfield Daily Examiner
