MRSA Action UK memorial press statement

This week the British People are celebrating the 60th Birthday of the NHS, and while this very British institution has helped in improving the Health of the Nation, there is in our opinion much more to do to reduce the risk of catching life threatening healthcare infections and save lives.

The founding of the NHS was the most civilised move any Nation had taken for the people of its country and it still is regarded as one of the best healthcare systems in the world with the ethos of its founders, of treatment free at the point of use.

Healthcare in the UK however languishes near the bottom of the international league of success in controlling healthcare infections in our hospitals. Despite all the initiatives introduced by the Government to the fanfare that they will reduce infections in our hospitals, there is very little progress in this sphere.

Evidence is now coming to light that all the initiatives introduced by this Government are indeed greatly flawed, with the promise to reduce MRSA bacteraemia’s by 50% by March this year being breached by over 30% of Hospital Trusts already. Even the much vaunted “Deep Clean” announced by the Prime Minister last September was been shown to have been a sham this week, as reported in The Independent on Sunday.

On Thursday the 3rd July our Charity will be holding its Annual Memorial event at Westminster Abbey to remember all those who have been affected by healthcare infections. Our Charity will be laying a wreath to remember the 50,000 plus who have died from MRSA alone and the hundreds of thousands who have contracted MRSA and survived since this Government were elected in 1997.

We will be remembering the victims of all healthcare infections who have suffered and been lost. Our members and those of the public will lay their own tribute to their loved ones at Westminster Abbey, and our Memorial will act as a reminder to those who are charged with the Health of the Nation, that we need to concentrate our efforts on reducing the incidence of those affected by infections in our hospitals.

The events at the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells last year should be a salutary reminder to us all of the cost that many families have paid when the system of Infection Prevention and Control fails. The events at that Trust cast a shadow over the NHS, and the hand-wringing and excuses were an insult to the intelligence of the family’s that suffered and to the people of this country. As a Charity we were astounded when it was announced that the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trusts was an isolated incident as our own evidence showed otherwise, and in our opinion staff should have been held accountable and not paid off.

The NHS was born 60 years ago as a development as to what can be achieved when radical thinking is combined with political courage. Our Charity believes that we can no longer have the situation were this subject is used as a political football by any of our elected representatives to be bounced around to suit any body’s particular agenda. There has to be no more spin; there has to be no more inaction; and particularly there has to be no more trying to sell this subject with a public relations strategy in convincing us that they are winning this battle, as outlined in recent reports that it has to improve presentation. Our Charity is of the opinion that the time has arrived and that we are calling on our elected representatives from what ever political spectrum to have the Political courage combined with the radical thinking to work together for the common good of everyone to eradicate avoidable Healthcare Infections from our Healthcare settings.

At our Memorial event we will pay tribute to all those that have suffered and been lost from healthcare infections, and that in their suffering and loss we can ensure that today’s and tomorrow’s generations will not have to live with these infections legacy they leave. As parents we owe this to our children in that they inherit a world safer than the one passed on from our parents. For if we stand and do nothing, we will have discharged our responsibility to society, and to accept what some in authority think is inevitable would be a betrayal of those generations.

Our Memorial event will be to remember those in the past, by those in the present, to protect those in the future.


Derek Butler
Chair
MRSA Action UK
Registered Charity No 1115672
Tel No 07762 741114

http://mrsaactionuk.net