MRSA Action UK will listen with interest to the speeches from both the Health Secretary Alan Johnson and our Prime Minister Gordon Brown at this year's Labour Conference in Manchester. We expect that both the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary will praise the NHS staff for achieving the 50% reduction in MRSA bacteraemia and MRSA Action UK applauds those trusts where staff, from Board to Ward, has achieved that reduction and more.
MRSA Action UK have however scrutinised the figures and our findings relay a worrying picture. Although the Health Secretary and the Prime Minister have said that the target reduction in MRSA bacteraemias has been exceeded, the facts are:
2 NHS Trusts have seen increases equivalent to 50% of their total MRSA bactereamias for the year 2007/08
MRSA bactereamias only account for 6% of the total MRSA infections. At the current calculations from the figures released the missing 94% is equivalent to 60,316 MRSA infections that go totally unreported which have proved fatal in many cases.
The Health Secretary and the Prime Minister have repeatedly spoken on Health issues in regard to the inequalities that purvey in the system. The one issue that they have consistently never mentioned is the health inequality in respect to healthcare infections. Our findings show quite clearly that not only have over 50% of hospitals failed to achieve the 50% reduction in MRSA by March 2008, set by the former Health Secretary John Reid on November 5th 2004, some hospital trusts have actually got worse since that date. These inequalities on the reduction of these infections across the NHS have an affect on everyone, for if you look at the figures regionally then the true inequality is clear.
Both the Prime Minister and those Ministers charged with the health of the nation, the people of this country deserve to know the true facts on how inadequate this Government have been with the safety of the patients who use the NHS. MRSA Action UK have analysed the figures on a regional basis and our findings give cause for concern, not only for the people of this country, but for the how competent those Ministers are charged with ensuring the safety of the patients within the NHS.
Our Regional analysis shows that
In London 45% of Trusts failed to achieve a 50% reduction in MRSA bacteraemias / 2 NHS Trusts with higher rates of MRSA in 2008 than in 2004
Those Ministers that have been charged with the Health of the Nation should take no comfort from our analysis. If we look at the regional performance we can see that the Health Secretary’s own Strategic Health Authority of Yorkshire and The Humber had 73% of it’s hospital trusts fail in achieving the 50% reduction along with the fact that 3 of it’s hospital trusts had higher MRSA bacteraemias in 2008 than in 2004. It’s Clostridium difficile infections reflect the same performance.
Even the Strategic Health Authority that the Labour Conference is being held in, the Northwest, had 79% of it’s hospital trusts fail the 50% reduction and incredibly had 5 hospital trusts that had higher numbers of MRSA bacteraemias in 2008 than in 2004. The Under Health Minister Ivan Lewis has a constituency within this Strategic Health Authority as does Andrew Burnham a former Under Health Minister.
The statistics are no better for Health Ministers Ben Bradshaw, Dawn Primorolo and Ann Keen. All of whom have failed to ensure that patients are safe from these infections. Ben Bradshaw and Dawn Primorolo’s Strategic Health Authority has an NHS Trust that believes being second worst in the country for Clostridium difficile is an improvement.
At last year’s Labour Conference, the Health Secretary made some very assertive comments in his speech to the conference and to the people of this country. He said that in the ten years since labour has come to power “we have seen greater investment, more staff, reduced waiting times, new hospitals and radically improved survival rates, particularly in cancer and cardio-vascular disease”. What he has failed to say is that since this Government was elected we have seen the biggest rise in healthcare infections than that of any Government in history. The European Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance System shows that since 1999 MRSA resistance rose from 33% to 44.5% in just two years. It remained at that level until pressure was applied from organisations like ourselves who had suffered the impact of this Government and those ministers who failed to take charge of the situation to begin to reduce the suffering and loss of lives to avoidable healthcare infections.
Alan Johnson has gone on record and stated that this Government has a proud record on the NHS over the last decade; in fact on Healthcare Infections it’s record is abysmal with over 50,000 people having lost their lives to MRSA alone since they and he was elected to Parliament in 1997.
MRSA Action UK would like to see from this Government more humility from those Ministers because as an organization we believe that one of the greatest honours that can be bestowed on a person, is to be elected to represent their peers and to speak on their behalf. To be elected to the House of Commons is in our opinion the highest Honour of all as an elected representative.
As an elected representative, especially when elected to the House of Commons, and to sit in governance of those who you represent means that you have a responsibility to ensure that you speak and represent people in a truthful and honourable manner irrespective of bias or advantage by which ever means.
When you have been charged with the responsibility of state in high office, you have the duty to ensure that those that work under you have the same responsibility to see that probity and propriety is done. If you are charged with the health of our nation, you have the added imposition that you have the lives of the people of this country in your hands and as such you must ensure that ever citizen is given the best access and the treatment that our Health Service can provide in a clean and safe environment. As a minister of state it is essential in whatever position that you hold, you must maintain the respect and the credibility of the people you represent, and that you must maintain property and propriety at all times.
The media attention may focus this week on whether the Prime Minister and this Government are fighting for theirs and his political life, this pales in to insignificance when patients are fighting for their own lives from avoidable healthcare infections where the price is often far more than any Minister will ever pay.
It is time this Government stopped using healthcare infections as a political tool, and that they acknowledge that the failure to recognise the regional disparities and to address the problems with targeted investment and action makes those Ministers culpable, in our opinion, for the suffering of thousands. Their use of spin to portray the action they initiating is unforgivable, but to use the spin to try to sell this issue as a public relations exercise is a betrayal of those future generations that may be left without the effective use of antibiotics to fight the simplest of infections.
Above all the Government must recognise that it is not acceptable to have an ethos of reducing Clostridium difficile by 30%, believing it is acceptable to reduce MRSA bacteraemias by half the numbers in 2004, bearing in mind that bacteraemias represent only 6% of healthcare associated infections. The aspiration must be one of zero tolerance to avoidable infections, and that the postcode lottery that currently exists makes a significant contribution to “health inequalities” – a term so frequently used by the Government.
Derek Butler
Chair
MRSA Action UK
http://mrsaactionuk.net
07762 741114
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