BRITAIN:Appalling hygiene, a shortage of nursing and unacceptable management contributed to outbreaks of a hospital superbug that killed about 90 patients in southeast England, a damning report said yesterday.
Media reports said police and the UK Health and Safety Executive were examining the findings of the Healthcare Commission report to see if criminal charges were appropriate against the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust.
The commission found that on several occasions nurses had told patients to "go in their beds" rather than helping patients with diarrhoea to get to a commode or bathroom.
Some patients were left for hours in wet or soiled sheets.
Patients with the bug, C. difficile, were moved between wards and trust managers had failed to set up a special isolation area for them. The watchdog blamed a focus on meeting government targets for emergency admissions.
"It took four months to establish an isolation ward exclusively for patients with C. difficile. In our view this was partly because of the pressure on beds and the trust's desire to meet targets," the report said.
The bacterium, commonly transmitted while patients are in hospital, most often affects those with weak immune systems and the elderly. Figures show cases of the potentially lethal bug in hospitals are on the rise. -