The NHS is not doing enough to combat the increasing number of healthcare-acquired infections, a watchdog has warned.
The National Audit Office found that despite an overall decrease across the NHS since the introduction of a £120m investment, both MRSA and Clostridium difficile have increased in some areas.
And there is no national data capturing information on the most common healthcare associated infections, such as urinary tract infections, pneumonia and skin infections, the report stated.
"There is therefore no national aggregate data on the total number of healthcare associated infections in England and a lack of consensus on how to estimate it," the NAO said.
The Department of Health successfully met its MRSA reduction target of 57 per cent, but some trusts failed to comply with government guidelines.
While a quarter of trusts had achieved an 80 per cent reduction in MRSA cases, 12 per cent of trusts saw an increase.
With C. difficile, 29 per cent of trusts reduced their rates of infection by more than 50 per cent, but 19 per cent rose over the same period.
Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, warned that across the NHS "compliance with good practice is still not universal".
He added: "Inevitably with a focused centrally-driven initiative of this kind, the improvements are not uniform across the NHS."
The public accounts committee chairman Edward Leigh said the increases in other common deadly bloodstream infections were "threatening all those who use our healthcare system".
He said: "There has been a lamentable lack of progress in measuring these other infections and therefore they have been neglected."
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd