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Hospital-acquired Infections

Angela Watkinson (Upminster) (Con): My hon. Friend mentions pieces of paper. Does it surprise him to hear that when I recently visited a friend in hospital—in a mixed ward, incidentally—there was a piece of paper on the wall at the entrance to the ward stating, "All visitors and staff to wash their hands with the gel on the trolley on entering and leaving the ward"? There was no gel, and there was no trolley, so how on earth can a piece of paper be said to contribute to hygiene on the ward?

Tim Loughton: My hon. Friend is lucky to have seen a piece of paper giving advice. So often, during my many visits to hospitals, I have had to remind staff that I wanted to wash my hands or use the gel before visiting patients, and staff sometimes tell me that the stuff is not available.

The news has been even more worrying recently. The Minister's reply to my parliamentary question revealed that, between 1997 and 2003, the number of reports of MRSA in children up to the age of 14 trebled. More worryingly still, a study by the Patients Association released this week revealed that hundreds of babies, many just a few days old, have been infected with MRSA in hospitals around Britain. As Professor Hugh Pennington of Aberdeen university, a microbiologist and expert in hospital-acquired infections, is reported as saying:

"If babies are getting MRSA, that is of concern, because it shows there is something seriously wrong with the infection control procedures."

Hospitals in the survey included the Portsmouth Hospitals NHS trust, which admitted to having 38 babies aged under four weeks with MRSA. Eastbourne district general hospital in Sussex admitted that it had to close its baby unit for a whole week last year because five babies were carrying MRSA. Those figures alone suggest that the parliamentary answer by the Minister for Public Health, to which I referred, seriously understated the extent of the problem. In the other place, Lord Hanningfield asked a parliamentary question about the incidence of MRSA among children under five. The answer, provided by Lord Warner, estimated 71 cases in 2003, but that must be seriously awry simply on the basis of the figures that I have just provided.

Last Friday evening, I visited the neo-natal unit—the Trevor Mann baby unit—of the Royal Sussex county hospital in Brighton. It is a dedicated unit with a very professional staff doing a fantastic job under considerable pressure. The work is very demanding of staff, who have to look after babies born as early as 24 weeks after conception. If MRSA strikes there as viciously as it has in other hospitals, we really will face a serious problem that will affect some of the most vulnerable people in our hospitals.

We understand that, in order to deal with the problem, the Government have commissioned a study—yet another study—that will cost £140,000. How long will it take to report, and what are the Government doing now about improving screening for new babies? What are they doing about people and equipment coming into contact with new babies in these very high-tech and sensitive wards? We read that thousands of babies are also being struck down by the respiratory syncytial virus, RSV, which can be picked up on dirty wards in the same way as MRSA.

We can also see this week that patients are abandoning NHS hospitals and seeking treatment abroad, because they fear catching MRSA. Hans Finck, managing director of a German medical net company that organises treatment for foreign patients, said that thousands of Britons are travelling to Germany for operations. Before, he said,

"the main thing people used to mention was waiting lists in Britain, but now many mention MRSA."

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