More than three million NHS patients are still being admitted to mixed-sex wards each year despite repeated promises by ministers to end this.

Mixed-sex NHS wards for 3m patients

Extracts from the Telegraph:

"A study published by the Healthcare Commission has also found that hospitals were getting dirtier, fewer staff were always washing their hands before touching patients and a fifth of people who needed help with meals were still not getting it.

Its survey of 76,000 inpatients in England – the largest of its kind – measured hospitals on factors that included quality of care, dignity and respect, privacy, waiting times, complaints and quality and availability of information."

"Last year, almost 13 million people stayed at least one night in hospitals in England, meaning that up to 3.2 million were admitted to a mixed-sex ward.

Nearly a third of patients also reported having to use a bathroom shared with members of the opposite sex.

Medway NHS Trust in Kent was the worst in the country for mixed-sex wards, with a score of 54.83. The Cardio­thoracic Centre in Liverpool rated highest on 97.45.

Labour first promised to abolish mixed-sex wards in 2002 but after arguments over what constituted a ward or a sleeping area, Lord Darzi, the health minister and a practising surgeon, said single-sex wards were "an aspiration that cannot be met". "

Thousands of hospital staff in Britain fail to wash hands correctly - UK

So numbers of cases of MHSA are still increasing...)o: See Thousands of hospital staff fail to wash hands correctly

Extracts from the article:

"A study has discovered that 88 per cent of hospital staff are not following government orders to wash their hands before and after contact with patients.

Researchers who followed teams of doctors and nurses for a week, found that even when dealing with patients infected with the deadly superbug, 84 per cent were not washing their hands correctly.

Health staff carrying out wound care, such as changing bandages, failed to follow hand-washing guidelines on 86 per cent of occasions, while a quarter of staff did not wash their hands after contact with human waste.The failure of staff to follow hand-washing guidelines is hampering the multi-million pound fight to combat MRSA, which is blamed for the deaths of as many as 5,000 patients each year."

(MRSA stands for Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus. MRSA occurs most commonly in people who are already in hospital. People who are more prone to it are those who are very ill, or have wounds or open sores such as bed-sores or burns. The wounds or sores may become infected with MRSA and the infection is then difficult to treat. Infections which start in the skin may spread to cause more serious infections. Also, urinary catheters and tubes going into veins or parts of the body ('drips' etc) are sometimes contaminated by MRSA and can lead to urine or blood infection.)

Puerperal fever (or childbed fever) was common in mid-19th-century hospitals and often fatal, with mortality at 10%-35%. It was largely caused by the failure of doctors to wash their hands before dealing with patients. - That was more than a century ago! - Isn't it time that health professionals learnt the importance of effective hand-washing before dealing with their patients, and accepted personal responsibility for what could be the literally grave consequences to their patients when they fail to do it? - Surely this poor hygiene is medical negligence?