MRSA (Hansard, 3 April 2000)

§ Mr. Edwards
To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) if he will commission an independent inquiry into the incidence of MRSA; [115928]
(2) what was the incidence of MRSA in hospitals in England and Wales for 1996. [115927]

§ Yvette Cooper
MRSA is the antibiotic-resistant form ofStaphylococcus aureus, a bacterium which is carried harmlessly on the skin by at least a third of the population. About 80 per cent. of the population who acquire MRSA similarly carry it harmlessly on the skin and do not suffer from any infection. Neither the number of hospitals recording MRSA outbreaks nor the total number of patients in National Health Service hospitals who have MRSA are recorded centrally. The Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS) compiles aggregate data on numbers of incidents of MRSA which are voluntarily reported by NHS trusts. The available data on MRSA for England and Wales show that there were 2,107 reported incidents in 1996. An incident is three or more patients infected or colonised by the same strain of MRSA in the same month from the same hospital. We are working with the PHLS on improving surveillance systems so as to provide more complete data on MRSA and so that we can consider what further action is required.

§ Mr. Flynn
To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is his assessment of the total number of deaths which have resulted from(a) MRSA and (b) other hospital-acquired infection in each of the past 10 years. [115946]

§ Yvette Cooper
[holding answer 28 March 2000]: There are no centrally held statistics on deaths caused by hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), including Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Different doctors will have different views on the role of HAI in a patient's death.
MRSA infection can take the form of many different diseases 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.