Clean start on wards is welcome (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Clean start on wards is welcome

9:36am Friday 20th July 2012 in Our View By Telegraph & Argus

We expect, when we go into a hospital for treatment, that we are in the right place to be kept safe from disease and infection.

But, when you stop to think about it, hospitals are full of sick people, so it is unsurprising that staff at organisations such as Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust are fighting a constant rearguard action against patients contracting secondary infections while under their care.

Recent years have seen a rise in the incidence nationwide of so-called superbugs – MRSA and Clostridium difficile being the chief enemies in this war to keep the wards clean.

But now Bradford’s hospitals are about to deploy what could be a weapon of mass destruction – or as near as you can get in the murky, microscopic world of pathogens – to drastically reduce the threat of infection from these lurking potential killers.

There may well be some minor disruption as patients are temporarily moved out of wards to allow staff to use this brand new cleaning technique which utilises the very hi-tech sounding “hydrogen peroxide vapour” to eliminate superbugs, but that will surely be a small price to pay.

The Foundation Trust faces a tough target of having no more than 60 cases of C.diff in a year – a target it failed to meet last year and is in danger of missing again this year.

This new cleaning process, however, might well avoid that. At a cost of £8,000 a ward, this deep clean might not come cheap, but if it helps the trust avoid a punitive financial slap on the wrist for missing its target and – much more importantly – keeps patients at a much lower risk of contracting C-diff, then it will have been well worth the price.