Equipment to help beat MRSA
October 1st 2004

Hospital-acquired infections such as MRSA are costing the UK around £1billion a year – and poor hand hygiene is one of the factors to blame.Kelvin Hefford of hand towel and disposable wiper manufacturer SCA Hygiene Products looks at how a few simple steps can help make an impact on this disease

MRSA and other hospital-acquired infections now kill around 5000 people in Britain every year.At the same time they are costing the NHS around £1 billion. So how did this alarming situation come about? MRSA has been around since the 1960s and is actually present in up to 40% of us.However, carriers experience little discomfort besides the occasional boil or other minor infection. But the fact that staphylococcus aureus has now become resistant to common antibiotics means there has been a rapid rise in the number of infections caused by the so-called superbug – MRSA - or Methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus.

Many other nations are reporting outbreaks of MRSA to some degree or other, but Britain has been dubbed the MRSA capital of Europe since we now have 15 times as many cases as Iceland and Denmark and more even than Greece, which has the most under-funded health system in the EU.

What can be done to slow down the epidemic in this country? New antibiotics are being developed all the time, but there is a real fear that MRSA will develop an immunity to these, too, leaving us with fewer defences than ever.A much simpler measure in the short term is to improve hand hygiene in hospitals because poor hand hygiene is one of the most common causes of hospital-acquired infections.

Studies have shown that rates of MRSA tend to fall by between 10 and 50 per cent when healthcare staff regularly clean their hands between patients.This was borne out by a six-month pilot of a ‘Clean Your Hands’ campaign implemented by the National Patient Safety Agency which led to a threefold increase in staff washing their hands.

The Department of Health estimates that if the campaign were to be carried out throughout Britain with the same degree of success, 450 lives and £140million a year would be saved.

The National Patient Safety Agency is now calling on NHS trusts to position alcohol gel rubs next to every hospital bed so that staff can sanitise their hands between patients.They want this done by April 2005 – though they have no powers to enforce it.

While alcohol-based disinfectants at the point of care are an advantage, hospitals themselves should ensure that washroom facilities are as hygienic as possible. For instance, door handles in washrooms should be avoided since these present an obvious risk of crosscontamination.

Hand towel dispensers should be easy to clean with no sharp corners where dirt can collect.

Soap dispensers with an arm lever or an automatic function can help prevent cross infection, and hand towel dispensers should give out only one towel at a time so that each towel is touched only by the user.

It is also important that soaps, hand towels and alcohol wipes never run out because a busy doctor or nurse is unlikely to restock the washroom themselves. Regular washroom checks should therefore be made and stickers should be placed on dispensers providing a contact number for when consumables need replacing.

Hand towels that are soft to the touch allow hand drying to be carried out frequently without causing chapping or soreness. Our own soft Tork Comfort towels have been well received in hospitals throughout Europe because they encourage hand hygiene among staff. For the same reason soaps should be mild and unperfumed and hand moisturisers should be supplied.

Other simple measures can be taken to be help check the spread of hospital-acquired infections. For example, a recent study by the Royal College of Surgeons found that doctors' ties were a significant source of cross-contamination.High-risk activities among patients were discovered to include sharing newspapers and using the ward telephone.

At present, MRSA accounts for around 44 per cent of the UK’s hospital acquired infections.At the other end of the scale is Holland where only one per cent of hospital infections are MRSA.

If we look at what the Dutch are doing differently from us,we see that they have a zero-tolerance approach to the superbug. Staff who test positive for MRSA are sent home for up to four months and treated with antibiotics, and wards where MRSA has been detected are closed down and the whole area cleaned and disinfected.

Surely the time has come for the UK to follow suit.By taking such an approach – and by improving washroom hygiene to minimise the number of MRSA outbreaks in the first place – maybe we can start to improve our own abysmal hospitalacquired infection record.

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