Outrage at award of £190K damages to Rose Gibb, CEO of NHS hospital where 90 patients died during superbug outbreak in overcrowded, dirty wards.

See BBC News report. In my opinion, this woman should have received a prison sentence, rather than a huge payout.

The fight against hospital superbugs in Scotland is being hampered by doctors not cleaning their hands properly, new NHS figures have suggested.

Fight against superbugs hampered by doctors failing to wash their hands
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"While nurses and other staff are heeding the message, doctors are still falling short of a target for compliance with hand hygiene rules.

Other statistics reveal that rates of Clostridium difficile and MRSA are falling, albeit at too slow a rate in the case of the former to meet official targets.

Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish health minister, welcomed the figures but Scottish Labour claimed a new 'superbug tsar' is needed to tackle the scourge.

The statistics were released after it was revealed police are interviewing nurses at Vale of Leven Hospital in Alexandria, Dunbartonshire, about a C. diff outbreak in which 18 people died.

They reveal that last November nurses complied with hand hygiene rules 95 per cent of the time, but for doctors the figure is only 84 per cent."

Seems like some really good news about reducing superbugs on hospital wards, by using copper fittings.

Copper fittings 'all but eliminate superbugs'
Article in the Telegraph

Extracts:

"The study, funded by the copper industry, found copper fittings rapidly killed bugs such as MRSA and C difficile - bugs which claim thousands of lives a year.

Trials at Selly Oak hospital, in Birmingham, found copper taps and toilet seats helped significantly reduce the presence of the bug.

Copper is a common constituent in medicines including antiseptic and antifungal creams."

"Professor Tom Elliott, lead researcher and a consultant microbiologist at the hospital, said: "The findings of 90 to 95 per cent killing of those organisms, even after a busy day on a medical ward with items being touched by numerous people, is remarkable.

"I have been a consultant microbiologist for several decades. This is the first time I have seen anything like copper in terms of the effect it will have in the environment.

"It may well offer us another mechanism for trying to defeat the spread of infection.'"

Sometimes comparatively simple measures are the most effective, as may prove to be the case with this. The simple measure that I know about personally is that the simplest, most reliable, safest, fastest way to reduce excess weight is to cut down drastically on salt and salty food. You can read about it here:

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

A 'survival kit' for NHS patients to take into hospital to protect them from viruses like MRSA has been produced for consumers.

NHS survival kit goes on sale to protect against hospital bugs like MRSA
Article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"The PatientPak contains wipes and sprays which kill MRSA, e-coli, norovirus, capylobactor, salmonella, listeria and even bird flu within 10 seconds.

The pack, which costs £15.99 and is available in high streets, includes anti-bacterial surface wipes, hand wipes, hair and body wash and a fabric spray for sanitising bedsheets and curtains.

The product has been launched amid growing concern amongst patients to protect themselves while in hospital.

PatientPak uses products containing Clinell, known for killing infections. However, the formula cannot kill C.diff - which can only be tackled with skin-toxic sporicide - but the pack contains soap and nail brushes to encourage people to clean hands."

Sounds a good idea.

The hospital trust at the centre of Britain's worst recorded hospital superbug outbreak which led to the death of 331 patients has escaped prosecution

Superbug hospital escapes criminal charges
Article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"Clostridium difficile contributed to the deaths of the patients over two-and-a-half years at three Kent hospitals a health watchdog report found.

Appalling standards of care, crowded wards, financial problems, a shortage of nurses and poor hygiene all led to the outbreak the Healthcare Commission found in a highly critical report in October.

However after studying that report, Kent Police and the Health and Safety Executive said there would be no charges over the deaths at hospitals run by the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Hospital Trust.

Assistant Chief Constable Allyn Thomas said: "Whilst the report makes for grim and at times distressing reading, our review has not identified any information that would indicate a need or duty to conduct a criminal investigation into the Trust at this time."

Relatives of those who died in the outbreak reacted angrily to the announcement.

Steve Stroud, whose 77-year-old stepmother Doreen Ford died in Maidstone Hospital said he was "disgusted" by the decision.

Mr Stroud, husband of former Bucks Fizz singer Cheryl Baker, said: "This is disgusting. Someone has got to be held to account over all these deaths and if it is not the hospital trust, then who the hell can it be?

"Someone really should have to carry the can over this... for no charges to be pressed is really disgusting. I can't believe it".

Baker, described the death of her mother-in-law as "legalised killing".

She said: "The Trust is to blame, I know that, everyone knows it and it makes my blood boil.

"Those patients didn't die by chance, they died because they contracted C diff at the Trust because of poor hygiene and care, so they are to blame, without a shadow of a doubt."

The Healthcare Commission had found the infection probably or definitely killed 90 people and was a factor in a further 241 deaths.

It also criticised the then chief executive of the trust, Rose Gibb, who left before the findings were published and is now reported to be fighting for a payout of several hundred thousand pounds.

But police said the report held no evidence that the deaths amounted to manslaughter."

Beggars belief, doesn't it?- All those deaths. All that suffering. All that sadness. - No-one held to account...

Without accountability there is less likelihood of improvement...

An NHS chief has apologised 22 times for his hospital's failure to care properly for an 89-year-old war veteran who died of the superbug C. diff

Letter that proves the sorry state of NHS care for elderly
Article in the Sunday Telegraph

Extract:

"In an extraordinary letter of confession, John Rostill, the chief executive of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, tells Susan Davies repeatedly that he is sorry for his staff's failure to provide adequate treatment for her father, Vic Jones, who served as a corporal in the Army in the Second World War.

Mr Jones died in May of a C. diff infection, which he had contracted in Worcestershire Royal Hospital after being admitted with pneumonia.

According to Mrs Davies, conditions on the wards were "grim". Her father was left next to a window in blazing sunshine in temperatures of over 80F, causing him to become dehydrated, she said.

Water was placed where he could not reach it, the hospital ran out of his medicine, and staff failed to order probiotic drinks that had been prescribed for him.

"There were faeces on his bandages and on the walls," she said. "Every day there were signs of neglect. I had to constantly complain to get even the most basic care for him.""

This appalling, cruel, negligent treatment and suffering is what we pay our high taxes for!

And even now, some deluded people speak of the NHS as the envy of the world! - Yeah, right!

More than a quarter of health trusts in England are failing to meet basic hygiene standards, official figures show today.

NHS trusts fail to meet hygiene standards
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"The Healthcare Commission reports that no improvement has been made on a year ago.

In total, 103 out of 391 trusts admitted they did not achieve the minimum requirements, brought in by the Government to help combat the hospital superbugs, MRSA and Clostridium difficile.

Patients groups and politicians said that it was "shocking" that one in four still did not meet the standards, despite ministers' pledges to tackle cleanliness.

More than 8,000 deaths were related to MRSA and C. diff. The report shows that 26 per cent of trusts failed to keep facilities clean, did not have adequate infection control or follow guidelines on decontaminating reusable equipment.

Only 40 per cent of trusts claim to have met all the Governments standards, which include patient care and confidentiality as well as hygiene, a slight fall on last year."

Record numbers of patients are dying in hospitals and nursing homes after contracting superbugs, new figures show.

Superbugs MRSA and Clostridium difficile killing record numbers of patients

Extracts from the Telegraph:

"MRSA and Clostridium difficile were linked to more than 8,000 deaths in England and Wales in 2006, up from 5,300 the previous year.

The first ever breakdown of deaths from both infections by location released by the Office for National Statistics shows that the vast majority of patients died from the bugs in hospital.

The deadly infections also killed small numbers of patients in nursing homes and hospices."

"Worst ten hospitals for deaths from superbugs

Number of deaths from MRSA 2002 - 2006

Derriford Hospital, Plymouth 94

Queen Alexandra Hospital, Portsmouth 81

Maelor Hospital, Wrexham 79

Musgrove Park Hospital, Taunton 77

Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton 75

General Infirmary, Leeds 70

Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge 68

Birmingham Heartlands Hospital 67

Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital 65

General Hospital, Southampton 64

Number of deaths from C difficile 2002 - 2006

Royal United Hospital, Bath 268

George Eliot Hospital, Nuneaton 235

Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry 233

Royal Infirmary, Leicester 203

General Hospital, Kettering 200

Birmingham Heartlands Hospital 177

General Hospital, Leicester 169

Frimley Park Hospital 164

Sunderland Royal Hospital 152

General Hospital, Southampton 149"

The number of deaths in Britain linked to the potentially deadly superbug Clostridium difficile has quadrupled in just five years.

Deaths from hospital superbug Clostridium Difficile quadruple

Extract from the Sunday Telegraph:

"More than 6,000 people died in 2006 after becoming infected with the gut infection in hospitals across England and Wales - a more than four-fold rise compared with 2001 figures, the Office of National Statistics will say.

Meanwhile, the number of deaths linked to MRSA rose by more than one third, with the infection mentioned on almost 1,700 death certificates in 2006.

The figures, due to be published on Thursday, follow an admission by the Department of Health's most senior experts in infection control that the main reason for a 50-fold increase in cases of Clostridium difficile in less than two decades is the failure of hospitals to follow hygiene rules drawn up 14 years ago."

Hospitals across the country are helping to fuel the rise of superbugs like MRSA and C Difficile by overprescribing antibiotics.

Hospital antibiotics 'fuelling superbugs'

Extract from the Telegraph:

"GPs are already being urged not to hand out the drugs for coughs and colds but many hospital doctors also overuse the medication, Prof Mark Wilcox, of Leeds University, said.

Prof Wilcox, an expert on the control of hospital acquired infections, will tell a conference on intensive care medicine in London next week that part of the problem is that the health service does not know what antibiotics hospitals prescribe."

Infection rates in British hospitals are ten times higher than those in other countries

British hospitals 'worst for superbugs'

Extracts from the Sunday Telegraph:

"Infection rates in British hospitals are 10 times higher than those in other countries, according to a damning report.

The report, from a panel of government advisers, warns of "a fifty-fold increase since 1990", with one in five cases of the killer bug Clostridium difficile now affecting patients below the age of 65.

A leading infection expert, Prof Richard James, director of the Centre for Healthcare Associated Infections, said the figures meant Britain's death rate from the bug was likely to dwarf those of other countries. The unpublished report, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, urges hospitals to improve hygiene, testing and isolation procedures to slow the spread of the infection, which was caught by more than 50,000 people last year."

"A television programme tonight warns that C. difficile infection is becoming increasingly resistant to treatment.

• 'Panorama: How Safe is Your Hospital?', BBC1 10.20pm, Sunday April 27th."

You can improve your resistance to infection by eating less salt/sodium and salty food.

C diff deaths up by 72 per cent

Superbug deaths up by 72 per cent

Extract from the Telegraph:

"Deaths related to the hospital superbug Clostridium difficile have risen by almost three quarters, according to official figures.

The number of deaths involving the severe form of infectious diarrhoea rose by 72 per cent, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

However, MRSA-related deaths have levelled out, the ONS said."

You can improve your health and resistance to infections by avoiding salt and salty food. - See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/conditions.html

Patients are losing faith in the NHS.

Patients losing faith in the NHS, claims survey

Extract from Sunday Telegraph article:

"Keith Pollard, of the information website Treatment Abroad, who carried out the study, said: "Despite huge investment in the NHS over the past 17 years, patients from the UK are voting with their feet and travelling abroad."

A fifth of those questioned by the Patients Association identified a reduction in waiting times as their main priority.

Fifteen per cent said cuts in hospital infections would make the greatest difference to them and 14 per cent wanted to see more staff on duty.

The findings follow the publication of official figures which show the Government is failing to meet its target for reducing the spread of hospital infections.

Cases of C. diff increased by seven per cent in hospital patients over the age of 65. Cases of MRSA fell by 10 per cent from a high of 7,096, but this was not enough to meet the Government's pledge to halve the rate by next year.

However, despite grave concerns over the NHS, the Patients Association survey found a clear majority rejects any move towards creating an insurance-based health care system on US or French lines.

More than 40 per cent support the current method of funding the NHS through national taxation. Twenty four per cent of those who took part, however, back a tax deductible insurance policy as a way of paying for treatment.

The survey, shows an overwhelming majority want an end to Britain's healthcare "postcode lottery" where availability of drugs and treatments depends on location.

Our findings on the growing number of health tourists provoked an angry response from the Health Secretary, Alan Johnson.

In a letter to The Sunday Telegraph he states: "Most of the treatment carried out overseas is either minor cosmetic surgery or dentistry. Little of the treatment is for general elective surgery, and where it is the majority of people accessing it would probably have gone private in the UK anyway."

The Patients Association is still collecting responses to its survey at www.patientsassociation.org.uk."

In my opinion, the hugely expensive and extremely flawed NHS should be scrapped.

Lose weight and improve your health in many ways without drugs or expense by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/.html (The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/steroids.html

vulnerable groups

How to Lose weight!

Children and Obesity

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

See Sodium in foods and

Associated health conditions and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.

The Department of Health ignored damning report into an outbreak of Clostridium difficile at a hospital trust in Kent more than five months ago...

Government ignored deadly hospital bug report

Extract from Telegraph account:

"The Department of Health knew of a damning report into an outbreak of Clostridium difficile at a hospital trust in Kent more than five months ago and failed to act, it was claimed last night.

A draft copy of the Healthcare Commission report was first received by the health department on May 3, yet ministers only intervened when the document became public in October, the Tories said.

They are now demanding to know why the Government failed to act immediately on the report, which found that the outbreak had "probably or definitely" killed at least 90 people at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust hospitals.

Drafts, requiring factual accuracy checks on figures, were sent to health officials in May and September. But Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, told Parliament that he only received the report on Oct 9."

Up to 20 hospitals had higher levels of clostridium difficile last year than the health trust at the centre of the superbug outbreak that killed 90+

Twenty hospitals worse than superbug ward- Telegraph

Extract:

"Up to 20 hospitals had higher levels of clostridium difficile last year than the health trust at the centre of the superbug outbreak that killed at least 90 people, new figures reveal.

List of problem hospitals

Iraq soldier Jamie Cooper latest superbug victim

At the weekend it emerged that 18-year-old Private Jamie Cooper, the youngest Briton to be injured in Iraq, could be one of the latest victims of the disease which causes severe diarrhoea and is spread by poor hygiene.

The list of hospitals with a poor C.diff record emerged as the Government was accused of ignoring an internal memo in 2006 that warned that the infection was becoming endemic in NHS hospitals and suggested that £270million was needed to tackle it. "

Superbug hospital chairman, James Lee, has resigned.

Superbug hospital chairman steps down - Telegraph

Extract:

"The chairman of the NHS trust at the centre of Britain's biggest superbug outbreak has resigned following pressure over the decision to award the trust's chief executive a £250,000 pay-off.

James Lee resigned from the board of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells Hospitals NHS Trust in Kent following an outbreak of Clostridium difficile which claimed up to 90 lives.

Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, announced the resignation to the House of Commons, apologising for the "truly scandalous" outbreak.

Mr Lee was last week ordered to attend a meeting with local MPs to explain why Rose Gibb was given the severance deal just days before the extent of the trust's failures to prevent the spread of clostridium difficile was revealed in a damning report.

Mr Johnson stepped in to block the payment to Miss Gibb, who left her post as head of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust by "mutual agreement" at the end of last week.

It unclear whether Mr Johnson has the legal power to prevent Miss Gibb being paid the money, and the matter now seems likely to end up in court.

MPs and health campaigners have expressed their disgust over the trust board's decision to award Miss Gibb the money in the first place."

Warning about NHS superbugs went unheeded...

Labour failed to heed NHS superbugs warning - Sunday Telegraph

Extracts:

"They were told last October, in a confidential memo which The Sunday Telegraph has seen, that hospitals were not taking the problem seriously and that £270 million was needed urgently to combat the bug. But Labour provided just £50 million, topped up by another £50 million this summer as public concern grew. The memo was written by Liz Woodeson, the head of the Department of Health's infection unit, just a month after Britain's biggest superbug outbreak infected 1,100 patients at three Kent hospitals, killing 90 and contributing to the deaths of 240.

Miss Woodeson warned the then health secretary Patricia Hewitt that "virtually all trusts" were reporting outbreaks. "We suspect some trusts simply see it as an unavoidable fact of hospital life," she said.

Miss Woodeson added that £270 million should be invested in efforts to combat bugs, including £200 million on isolation rooms.

Cases have risen five-fold in the past decade, with 55,000 now reported annually, while the number of deaths linked to it tripled over four years to reach almost 4,000 by 2005.

Clostridium difficile is a highly contagious bacterium commonly caught from touching contaminated surfaces."

"A Healthcare Commission investigation into Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust found "significant failings" in infection control at three of its hospitals between April 2004 and September 2006. They included unwashed bedpans, a lack of isolation units and beds too close together.

Maidstone's MP Ann Widdecombe, cared for her mother Rita at home until her death in May aged 95 rather than send her to Maidstone Hospital.

She said: "Old folk go into our hospitals and die of dehydration because drips run out. They starve when trays are taken away with meals untouched. They ring bells for nurses which are ignored."

Police and the Health and Safety Executive are investigating the Kent outbreak."

NHS superbug board should have been sacked, say Tories - Guardian reports today

NHS superbug board should have been sacked, say Tories - Guardian

Extract:

"Government ministers were last night accused of aggravating the NHS superbug scandal by failing to take charge of the hospitals where 90 people died as soon as the scale of mismanagement became clear.

Andrew Lansley, the Conservative shadow health secretary, last night said the three hospitals of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS trust should have been brought under direct departmental control.

In a report on Thursday, the Healthcare Commission said scores of patients died from infection by Clostridium difficile bacteria in Britain's worst outbreak of a hospital superbug. It blamed the trust board for a catalogue of safety lapses that caused the death toll between April 2004 and September 2006.

Mr Lansley said the government should have acted to suspend or sack the trust's board as soon as it received an advance copy of the commission's findings in the middle of last week.

Instead, it allowed directors to agree a package worth more than £250,000 for Rose Gibb, the chief executive, who quit her job on Friday last week without any announcement or public explanation.

Mr Lansley said: "This devastating report should have precipitated the immediate removal of those responsible on grounds of gross negligence. Normally employees are entitled to written warnings, but in circumstances of gross misconduct most contracts allow for summary dismissal. I do not know why that did not happen in this case."

The commission accused the trust of "significant failings in infection control". When inspectors went into its hospitals after the C difficile outbreaks were contained, they found patients being provided with bedpans that were visibly dirty with faeces. Bedding and equipment was left on the floor, fire doors were blocked and needle and sharp instrument disposal bins were overflowing on four wards. Staff washed cups in treatment room sinks and stored food in the clinical refrigerators.

Mr Lansley said: "The Department of Health could and should have removed the entire board and any directors with a contribution to make could have been appointed to a new one. The power exists when ministers have no confidence in a board. It is difficult to imagine what might be a graver offence than the one they perpetrated." Sacking the board would have forestalled any payoffs, he added.

After media criticism of the payoff on Thursday, the health secretary, Alan Johnson, instructed the trust to withhold the severance payment, pending legal advice. The department said yesterday its lawyers were still considering the matter."

More about the hospital hygiene problems, C Diff and MRSA...

The Big Question: Why can't we keep our hospitals clean and protect patients from infection? - Independent

Extract:

"Yesterday an investigation by the Healthcare Commission revealed an astonishing litany of failings at three hospitals in Kent run by the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust which allowed the lethal bug Clostridium Difficile to spread unchecked. Between 2004 and 2006 it infected more than 1,100 patients, directly causing the deaths of 90 and contributing to the deaths of 345. The commission found appalling standards, akin to a Third World health service, including beds crammed together, wards dirty and understaffed, and patients with urgent diarrhoea told to "go in the bed" because nurses were too busy to take them to the lavatory.

Is this just an isolated case?

Sadly not – though it is the worst to have come to light. Last year an investigation into a similar outbreak at Stoke Mandeville hospital, where 334 patients were infected and 33 died from C Difficile between 2003 and 2005, painted a very similar picture of a poorly run hospital operating under extreme pressure where doctors and managers had failed to heed warnings about the threat from the bug. Last July, the 900-bed Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals NHS trust in north London became the first in the country to receive an official warning from the commission for putting patients at risk of infection. Serious breaches of the Hygiene Code, introduced in October 2006, which sets minimum standards for all trusts were found at the hospital.

But can we assume that hospitals are generally clean?

No. In June the Healthcare Commission reported that 99 NHS trusts admitted failing to meet minimum hygiene standards. That is one in four of the total in England. Worryingly, Barnet and Chase Farm was not among the 99. It had claimed it was meeting minimum standards but a spot check revealed poor provision of gels for cleaning hands, inconsistent and confusing messages to staff and inadequate isolation facilities. If other trusts are similarly deceived about their performance then hygiene problems may be even more widespread than the one in four figure suggests."

The national scandal that is the NHS: - the 'Health' service that harms, and even kills, far too many of the people who use and pay for it.

Where to start? - There is such a mass of evidence of appallingly poor hygiene and appallingly poor care amounting, in my opinion, to cruelty, in yesterday's reports that shocked and shamed and horrified our nation...

Healthcare Commission Report

Case studies: Wretched death of C.diff victims - Telegraph


Extract:

"Everything was going well, the hip was fixing, then four days after her operation to mend her hip we were told she had diarrhoea. As far as we knew that's all she had. We were not told that she had C.diff.

"She was left in her own soiled sheets and was sobbing because nobody had cleaned her up. Her treatment was appalling. She was not being fed properly, not being cleaned, and there was only one commode between six patients. She didn't die of a broken hip, she died of hospital neglect."

Mrs Stewart said she was considering suing Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. She said she was "not surprised" by the Healthcare Commission's revelation of so many deaths from C.diff.

"They seemed to be taking bodies away every five minutes," she said."

Superbug boss has record of dirty hospitals - Telegraph

Extract:

"Asked what she intended to do about the filthy wards at her hospital, Rose Gibb insisted she had introduced an "action plan" that would "address the issues" of inadequate cleaning.

This classic piece of management-speak was delivered in March 2001, when Miss Gibb was implicated in the first of a string of hygiene scandals at three separate NHS trusts.

The Daily Telegraph has learned that Miss Gibb, who rose to the £150,000-a-year post of chief executive of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust before she left the job last week, has an unenviable track record of presiding over dirty hospitals where infections have been able to spread.

Despite this, Miss Gibb has been richly rewarded by the NHS, which may yet give her £250,000 in severance pay if the Health Secretary's attempt to block it is ruled illegal."

I hope this woman receives a prison sentence...

Pay-off to superbug hospital chief is blocked - Telegraph

Read what ordinary citizens have to say about these disgraceful matters: - Health Secretary intervenes in superbug row: Have your say: How worried are you about hospital hygiene?