MRSA cases have plummeted in the two hospitals serving patients from the Hartlepool and east Durham areas.

And in the first of a new series for Mail2 – looking at different health issues each week – Chris Cordner learned how the experts are not resting on their laurels.


FROM cleaners to top-level doctors.

Staff at all levels are playing a key part in the battle to keep hospital wards and corridors bug free.

Figures for MRSA as a whole show 23 cases between April and December last year in the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust. That's eight fewer than the same period in 2006.

The Government message of cleanliness is never more apparent than at the University Hospital of Hartlepool.

Brand spanking new pieces of equipment adorn the building. There's £49,000 worth of new steam cleaners and there's 40 of them in different sizes.

The Trust has just won back the tender for cleaning services from the private sector. The trust's team of 285 cleaners, 15 supervisors and five managers are keeping Hartlepool spick and span.

There's another 18 more cleaners to come in a new jobs drive already under way.

It's a team effort, though, and the public must play their part, says Carole Pearson, the trust's acting director of infection prevention and control.

She told Mail2: "The fundamental issue is patient safety and a major part of that is ensuring they wash their hands."

The public is also being urged to challenge hospital staff about their standards of cleanliness. "Ask the staff if they have washed their hands. Challenge them," says Carole.

The hit squad of cleaners are tackling bugs at three levels.

• Domestic assistants handle day to day routine cleaning.



• After 9pm, the rapid response team goes into action. The team did not exist before last December. Up until then, nursing staff had to handle any cleaning problems themselves.



• Last, but not least, there's the deep cleaning team.

It deep cleans every department of the hospital every day from 9am to 5pm from Monday to Friday.

Sue Shannon, the facilities manager responsible for the deep cleaning programme, said: "The public's expectations are very high and we want that."

She says the funding available to tackle cleaning issues has never been better. "It is the biggest investment we have ever had in cleaning."

Swabs testing the cleanliness of hospital wards have also been bought. They contain firefly serum which shows up the tiniest bacteria.

Alcohol gels are everywhere to encourage people to wash their hands when they enter and leave hospital.
And an £80,000 investment in touch-free taps has just been completed.

But it's not just new investment which is helping.
In a clampdown on dress codes, doctors have become the latest hospital workers to be told they must wear nothing on their arms below the elbow.

Ties are also banned because experts have evidence they can gather bacteria.

Lesley Wharton, the lead nurse for infection prevention and control, said: "Our role is to keep all doctors and nurses and other staff in touch with the message and the latest message is the scrub-up campaign. Everyone has to do training about hand hygiene."

MRSA - the facts

MRSA is a strain of the Staphylococcus aureus family of bacteria.

• There is no specific "MRSA disease." It can cause infections depending on how it has entered the body.




• Three percent of the population carry MRSA on their skin or nose without having any signs of infection.




• The best way to reduce spreading infection in hospitals is good hand hygiene.




• MRSA is not resistant to all antibiotics but there is a restricted choice of treatments for infection.




• Patients and relatives can help hospital staff by washing their hands when entering and leaving wards, and not bringing lots of personal belongings in.