MRSA (Hansard, 26 February 2002)

§ Tim Loughton
To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many non-fatal cases of the MRSA superbug have been reported in each hospital trust in each of the last five years. [37141]

§ Ms Blears
The data requested are not held centrally. Information about bacteraemias blood stream infections due to MRSA has been collected from all acute trusts as the first stage of a new comprehensive and compulsory surveillance system since 1 April 2001. Early data from this surveillance was published in the 'Public Health Laboratory Service Communicable Disease Report on 8 February 2002', copies of which are available in the Library.

§ Tim Loughton
To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many inpatient deaths have been attributed to MRSA in each of the last five years. [37140]

§ Ms Blears
There are no centrally held statistics on deaths caused by health care associated infections, including Methicillin resistantStaphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
MRSA infection can take many forms, from trivial skin infection to pneumonia or septicaemia. Often the causative micro-organism is not specified on the death certificate. MRSA does not have a distinct code within the revision of the international classification of diseases used for encoding death registration data at the Office for National Statistics.