DIRTY wards are putting Britain鈥檚 hospital patients at risk of infection, say
public health experts. And the powerful antibiotics that some doctors routinely
dish out to counter this threat may hasten the rise of drug-resistant
superbugs.
At last month鈥檚 Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS) annual meeting in
Warwick, a senior public health official warned that increasingly overcrowded
hospitals could soon mirror falling standards in farms. 鈥淲hen animals are raised
under intensive conditions, antibiotics are used quite a lot. The hygiene
standards are dropping, and antibiotics are being used to compensate for that.
Maybe there is an analogous feeling in human medicine.鈥�
Poor hygiene was implicated in a mass outbreak of Clostridium
difficile infection last year among surgical patients at the Royal Devon
and Exeter Hospital. One possible source of infection was the bedpans, says
Exeter PHLS microbiologist Pota Kalima.
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鈥淚t鈥檚 the same everywhere,鈥� agrees David Jenkins, a consultant clinical
microbiologist with Leicester Public Health Laboratory. He describes watching a
consultant attend a woman with a colostomy. The consultant prodded her exposed
intestines with his bare finger. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 like sticking your finger up somebody鈥檚
bum,鈥� says Jenkins. 鈥淭hen he went straight to write up his notes. He had his
hand by his mouth, practically sucking his finger. He was just about to go off
and see another patient when I stopped him.鈥�