HC Deb 25 February 1986 vol 92 cc535-6W
88. Mrs. Renée Short

asked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will make it his policy to ensure that in future statistics of deaths from food poisoning in National Health Service hospitals distinguish those who acquired the infection in hospital from those who acquired it elsewhere.

Mr. Hayhoe

There are two sources of information about people who die in National Health Service hospitals from food poisoning:

  1. i. information on death certificates. This does not identify where the infection was acquired.
  2. ii. Reports of deaths arising in food poisoning outbreaks in hospitals, which are notified to the communicable diseases surveillance centre.

The latter are not comprehensive and difficulties in identifying the source and type of infection make such information imprecise. However, I have no plans to collect more detailed statistics.