Doctor's campaign against 'filthy'wards

A RETIRED GP has launched a campaign to improve hygiene in hospitals after his wife died from a superbug she picked up on a "filthy" ward while recovering from a routine operation.

Dr Roger Arthur is calling on members of the public to write to Health Secretary Alan Milburn to demand that more money is spent on cleaning up wards and improving hygiene standards, in a bid to reduce the rising rates of hospital-acquired infections.

His wife Patricia, 73, died in St Helier Hospital in Carshalton last month from the superbug methicillin-resistant streptococcus aureus, or MRSA, an infection which kills 5,000 hospital patients a year and is a factor in the deaths of 15,000 more.

Dr Arthur says the real figure may be much higher. The scale of the problem is highlighted by the fact that, at the time of Mrs Arthur's death, St Helier had a dedicated MRSA ward, designed to keep affected patients in isolation - but it was full.

"A lot of the time MRSA is listed simply as a 'secondary infection' on death certificates, and doctors may not want to specifically state it is MRSA because it reflects badly on the place they work in," Dr Arthur said.

On his insistence, MRSA was recorded as the cause of his wife's death on her death certificate. She had gone to St Helier for surgery to remove a benign obstruction in her bowel. Her husband said: "The operation was a success and she was discharged after eight or nine days.

"I noticed she had a bit of a cough but she seemed fine. However, when we got home she seemed to become ill and within 10 hours I could see she was going downhill fast. We went back to the hospital and they did some tests.

The doctor came back and told us it was MRSA."

Mrs Arthur died from the infection four days later. MRSA is antibiotic-resistant and while some people overcome it within a few days, it is potentially deadly for older and frailer patients. It costs the NHS pounds 1billion a year in treatment and other costs.

Dr Arthur, from New Malden, has little doubt how his wife became infected.

He said: "The ward she was on was absolutely filthy. There were sweet papers, fluff, old bits of Elastoplast and the tops of disposable syringes behind the bed when we came in, and still there when we came out.

"I ran my finger along the windowsill by my wife's bed. There was a thick layer of dust and a vase with dead flowers. There were cleaners around but they seemed to clean the middle of the floor and not bother anywhere else.

"I was told there was a ward for MRSA patients but that was full, so people with the infection were remaining in normal wards and infecting other patients."

St Helier Hospital was the subject of a damning report last August by the Commission for Health Improvement, which said levels of cleanliness were "seriously compromised", with wards smelling of urine and mortality rates significantly higher than the national average. Dr Arthur says the problem is not confined to one hospital.

"I don't intend to make a complaint against this one hospital," he said.

"But I am determined to make my wife's death count. I was organising her funeral when I came up with the idea for the campaign. I put a death notice in the newspaper and came up with the name Hygiene in Hospitals (MRSA). I asked for donations to that and I got pounds 350 sent in."

He intends to put the money towards paying for national newspaper adverts urging people to write to Mr Milburn to boost the campaign. He said: "Levels of cleanliness are nothing like they were when I was training in the Fifties.

Doctors need to stop relying on antibiotics so much - because germs can become resistant to them - and begin to stop germs from circulating in the first place.

"We need cleaners who are trained and know what they are doing, instead of people who offer the lowest tender. And the Government needs to put a lot more money into the whole thing. Otherwise, deaths from these infections will continue."

A Department of Health spokesman said: "The Government takes the issue of hospital-acquired infections very seriously and believes infection control and basic hygiene should be at the heart of good management and clinical practice in the NHS. A compulsory national surveillance service is being developed and a first phase, focusing on MRSA, was launched in April 2001."

A spokeswoman for St Helier Hospital said: "The trust is continually striving to improve standards of cleanliness and that remains a high priority. We are currently reviewing the majority of our facility services, which include cleaning, in order to attain the high levels of cleanliness and standards of service we want to provide."

She said the trust had received pounds 175,000 from the NHS modernisation fund to improve standards of cleanliness.

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