Hewitt orders inquiry into bug deaths
Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt has ordered an inquiry into how 12 elderly patients died after contracting a deadly bug at a Buckinghamshire hospital.
Last week it emerged that 300 patients at Stoke Mandeville hospital had been infected with a virulent strain of clostridium difficile (CD), which causes severe diarrhoea, since the end of 2003.
Ms Hewitt has now ordered an independent inquiry into the hospital’s infection control measures amid accusations that staff did not follow the correct procedures.
“Once it’s under control then, of course, there will be an independent inquiry so that any lessons that need to be learned can be learned, not only for that hospital but for the whole of the service,” the Health Secretary said.
Cases of the bug, which can be treated by antibiotics, have risen sharply across the UK. In the 1990s there were fewer than 1,000 cases a year, and in 2004 this figure had climbed to 43,682.
Meanwhile, 39 deaths at a London hospital have been linked to the acinetobacter superbug, which is resistant to almost all antibiotics.
The infection is normally harmless in healthy people but can be fatal when it attacks the immune systems of weak patients.
Doctors at St Mary’s hospital in Paddington have stressed that those who died were already very ill, but the Heath Protection Agency has admitted that acinetobacter is becoming a serious problem and recommended that infected patients should be isolated.
