LOCAL MRSA RATES FALLING SLOWLY BUT STILL DEEPLY WORRYING

Asked to comment on the recent figures showing a nationwide increase in deaths from MRSA, Woking Liberal Democrats' Parliamentary Spokesperson, Anne Lee, said "I have been approached by a patient from St Peters who suffered from MRSA after an operation. He is absolutely determined that others should not suffer the same fate. Having been prescribed many medicines, he was only cured when he turned to an alternative method and used a manuka honey. The photos he took of the toilets in St Peters Hospital were disturbing, but he was promised that they would be cleaned."

Woking Liberal Democrats have been conducting their NHS Inquiry, and 40,000 forms are being distributed across the constituency. Thousands of them are coming back all the time. The responses so far suggest that just under 40% of patients were not satisfied with the non-medical aspects of their stay in hospital (eg: food, cleanliness etc).

Looking at the number of MRSA reports that each specialist hospital recorded, in 2003/4 St Peters comes 26th and the Royal Surrey comes 17th out of 45 hospitals in the country. Dr Anne Lee said: "whilst the recent figures are deeply worrying, the important point is that St Peters rate of reported infection has come down over the last three years, and the Royal Surrey's rate of reported infection has come down over the last two years.

"I believe that the problems began when the Conservatives ordered hospitals to contract out their cleaning on the cheap. Labour have made things worse by giving political targets a higher priority than cleaning hospitals and fighting infections. I want to campaign to make sure that preventing, controlling and containing the spread of infection would no longer take second place to political targets.

"It is very important to get this rate of infection right down, at a basic level we also need to encourage all staff and visitors take great care to wash their hands thoroughly when in hospitals."