Relaunch of hands wash

A hand-washing campaign is to be relaunched to tackle the MRSA superbug in Shropshire's two main hospitals, health watchdogs have been told.

Tom Taylor, chief executive of the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust, revealed the organisation had already failed to hit this year's target for reducing the number of cases of the infection.

The target was to have no more than 34 between April and the end of next March but the figure was reached this week.

Mr Taylor said that 30 per cent of MRSA cases originated outside the hospitals and in addition to the hand-washing campaign, the Trust would be working with the county's two primary care trusts to find ways to combat the bug in nursing homes and the community.

He assured the county council's health overview and scrutiny committee that the Trust took infection control "very seriously".

And he said its rates of the highly infectious diarrhoea bug, Clostridium Difficile, which mainly hits elderly patients, were the lowest in the West Midlands.

The Royal Shrewsbury and Telford's Princess Royal had dealt with 49 emergency cases this year.

Mr Taylor was invited to yesterday's committee meeting to discuss what action had been taken following publication more than 12 months ago of the the findings of the inquiry into how the Trust found itself with massive debts.