Health officials draw up new anti-superbug strategy

New guidelines are being drawn up today by the Department of Health and NHS trusts in a bid to halt the spread of deadly superbugs.

Improving clinical protocols for dressing wounds in hospital and moving patients potentially at risk of infection are to be included in the proposals expected to be approved for immediate adoption by staff and hospitals.

The guidelines - also expected to cover medical devices such as catheters and surgical instruments - will be discussed at a London conference on infection control for NHS trusts and infection control experts from the UK and abroad today which is being chaired by the chief nursing officer, Chris Beasley.

Ms Beasley said: "By meeting today we can help ensure that infection control throughout the NHS is brought up to the level of the very best. I want to agree a set of measures for immediate action based on the evidence we will see today."

Delegates to the Learning from the Best conference will hear steps hospitals are already taking against reducing the risk of infections such as MRSA, including how University College hospital in London has in the last 12 months reduced its rate of MRSA blood infection by 60%.

This was achieved by introducing a system of following up patients after surgery with a visit by the hospital's wound infection surveillance team.

Peter Wilson, a consultant microbiologist at UCH, said: "We have seen a 50% drop in wound infection in some specialities."

Ward staff are now also wearing alcohol hand gel bottles around the waist to improve hand hygiene, he said.

Other measures against MRSA are also proving successful at hospitals in Southampton where infection control training for domestic staff and all new employees has been introduced, delegates were due to be told.

The conference is part of the government's action plan against MRSA infections and hospital hygiene announced in August after official figures showed a further 3.6% increase in the number of reports of MRSA infections in the last year.

The government has set a target of reducing the rates of MRSA bloodstream infection to be halved by March 2008.

MRSA, or methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, is resistant to conventional antibiotics, making it very difficult to treat. It is estimated that hospital-acquired infections overall strike about 100,000 people each year in England, costing the NHS ?1bn.