Time for a public inquiry into C Diff outbreaks

August 25th, 2008

I was disturbed by the news of another outbreak of C diff, this time at a hospital in Fife.

I am sure my own concern at the tragic toll this killer bug has had on Scottish hospitals over the last few months is matched by every Tele reader out there.

Of course, our own Inverclyde Royal Hospital hasn’t escaped the reach of C diff and we have had to deal with this problem locally.

It is has been called the bug that won’t go away and it has shook public confidence in our hospitals – something we must move quickly to redress.

People of my generation remember a different type of hospital – one where you couldn’t escape the strong smell of disinfectant, no carpets and visiting times were strongly enforced by the ward staff.

Hospitals are now a very different place and visitors and patients are made to feel a lot more welcome and relaxed.

So maybe the way in which we have opened up our hospitals has come at a cost with the rise of these so-called ‘superbugs’.

But this can’t excuse the lax surveillance systems in place that saw a 16 per cent increase in C diff rates in the last quarter, while our English counterparts got their house in order and cut C diff numbers by around a third.

While we can be proud of introducing radical improvements to public health such as the smoking ban, we shouldn’t be too arrogant to learn lessons from good practice in the NHS down south.

That is one of the reasons why I will be lending my voice to the calls for a full public inquiry into these outbreaks as a way to win back people’s confidence in our hospitals.