The figures, released yesterday by the Health Protection Agency, cast doubt on whether targets set by the Government to reduce C diff cases by 30 per cent in the next four years can be met.

It comes after at least 90 patients died from C diff at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells Hospital trust and contributed to the deaths of around 200 others in Britain’s worst superbug outbreak.

Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, said yesterday that the hospital’s board may have acted illegally when trying to pay off Rose Gibb, the trust’s chief executive, with £250,000 days before a damning report into the outbreak was published.

Signalling a clampdown on the “gravy train” managers who take large payoffs, Mr Johnson blocked the massive severance package.

Managers often receive pension benefits and large lump sums to leave failing trusts, only to re-appear in another hospital within months.

David Nicholson, the NHS chief executive, has today written to all hospital trusts warning them when severance deals are not acceptable.

The Health Protection Agency data showed cases of MRSA fell by 10 per cent last year, with 6,381 reported between April 2006 and March 2007, compared with 7,096 the previous year – but even that is not enough to meet the Government promise to halve the rate by 2008.

In January, a leaked Department of Health memo suggested that the target would never be met and rates of MRSA would only be reduced by a third and not half. Please see the posting by Health Direct below.

Richard James, Professor Of Microbiology at Nottingham University, said: “The target rate for MRSA reduction was over-ambitious and a lot of people suspected it would not be achieved. The Government have given themselves a longer period with C diff, but it remains to be seen if that will be hit.”

Mr Johnson insisted he was confident of hitting the target.

“These figures today are very encouraging,” he told BBC Radio 4.

Georgia Duckworth, from the HPA Centre For Infections, said the rise in C diff was slowing down and “going into the plateau” as results for April to June 2007 show a 13 per cent drop compared with the same period last year, with 13,660 cases, down from 15,639.

She said the drop in MRSA was impressive and constituted a “major achievement”.

However, a spokesman for the Patients Association said the alarming rate of infection in Britain’s hospitals — which sees 8.2 per cent of patients pick up a bug each year — was a “disgrace”.

Figures for glycopeptide-resistant enterococcal (GRE bacteria), which causes wound infections and blood poisoning, also show an increase in infection rates with 903 cases reported in 2005/06 compared to 758 in the previous year.

From:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/02/nhos102.xml

On 11 Jan 07 Health Direct posted NHS hospitals may never achieve MRSA superbug targets

The NHS is not on track to meet its MRSA target and perhaps never will, a leaked government memo says. In November 2004, then health secretary John Reid pledged MRSA rates would be halved by April 2008.

But the memo, sent to ministers by a Department of Health official, said it would only be cut by a third by then. It also reportedly recommended ways to handle the news in the media. Dr Mark Enright, from Imperial College, said the target was “unrealistic”.

On the one hand Health Direct is pleased that Alan Johnson is waking up to the disgrace that is thousands of preventable deaths, on the other hand the figures for summer are usually lower than those for winter- so worse may be expected.