The plan to subject two wards at Bradford Royal Infirmary to a "hygiene audit" on Monday as part of NHS Think Clean Day seems to be an acknowledgement by Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust that extra attention needs to be paid to cleanliness.

The general public are unlikely to disagree with that and will no doubt welcome it. There is a great deal of concern nationally and locally about the state of hospital wards. People are increasingly fearful about going into hospital even for minor surgical procedures because they worry that they might end up with an infection which does them more harm than the condition from which they are suffering.

This anxiety has been fuelled by a growing suspicion that the NHS authorities across the country are not telling the full story about the scale of infection by the "superbug" MRSA. Although it has now been admitted that the number of recorded deaths from it has risen, it is not clear whether or not that is because there really are more cases or because there is now a greater willingness to put "MRSA" on certificates as a cause of death. Until there is more openness about MRSA, it will be impossible to know the true situation.

Meanwhile, "hygiene audits" designed to focus the minds of staff on the procedures they should be following are a welcome step in the right direction. However, there needs to be follow-up action to ensure that those procedures are rigidly adhered to in every ward and department if NHS Think Clean Day is not to be seen as merely a public-relations exercise.

We can never be certain all is being done to tackle this scourge until every day in every hospital is a Think Clean Day.