A national hygiene audit will be published at the end of this month and will give figures on the MRSA bug on a hospital-by-hospital basis, Minister for Health Mary Harney told the Dáil yesterday.
Overall figures show that there were 315 reported cases of MRSA blood-stream infection in the first six months of this year, while there were 550 cases overall last year, 480 in 2003 and 445 in 2002.
Ms Harney said the increase in cases was due "mainly to the increased surveillance as a result of more laboratories participating in the reporting process".
Liz McManus, Labour's deputy leader and health spokeswoman, described the increase as "startling" and called for information to be given on the number of deaths from the MRSA bug.
However, the Minister said that "while some people with MRSA die, they also have underlying conditions. I do not have a breakdown as to how many die purely from MRSA, and I do not think anyone has that data."
The Labour deputy leader called for the Minister to reconsider this approach. "I have no doubt that people die from MRSA, but it is not being attributed as the cause of death.
"We need to know how many simply because there are clearly cases of individuals who have died from MRSA. It is simply unacceptable that the Minister for Health is unable to tell us how many such cases there are."
Ms Harney replied that it was not only the Minister for Health who could not tell her. "Nobody else can tell you either, because we do not have that data recorded. People acquire MRSA in many settings and not exclusively in a hospital environment.
"As I said, the HSE will work on a hospital-by-hospital reporting mechanism."
She said there had always been hospital infections. "Our duty is to minimise these by using the hygiene tools available to us. We need more isolation facilities and it is clear that more beds would make an important contribution to this."
Ms McManus said it was a matter of great concern that five children in the national maternity hospital were carriers of the MRSA bug. "Is the Minister able to say that staff within hospitals are doing what she asks, namely, washing their hands?" She added that the problem was also due to overcrowding.
Ms Harney said she accepted the issue was about more than washing hands, although all the international evidence available to her "would suggest it makes the single greatest contribution".
