§ Mr. Peter RobinsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Health how many cases of hospital acquired infections have been reported in the last 12 months for which records are available, broken down by hospital. [121087]
§ Miss Melanie JohnsonNational data on hospital infections are limited. This is one reason why we are developing a new national mandatory surveillance system for health care associated infection. This started with reporting of methicillin resistantstaphylococcus aureus (MRSA) blood stream infections (bacteraemias), in April 2001. All acute trusts in England now collect this information and results for the first year of this scheme (April 2001 to March 2002) were published by individual trust in the Communicable Disease Report Weekly on 20 June 2002. They are available at www.phls.co.uk/publications/cdr/PDFfiles/2002/cdr2502.pdf. Results by individual trust for the second year will be published shortly.
The Health Protection Agency has a number of voluntary reporting systems for a range of other pathogenic organisms but these do not provide data by trust.