'Urgent action' called over C diff

Labour has called for "urgent action" to tackle Clostridium difficile in Scotland's hospitals.

Jackie Baillie spoke out after details of an outbreak at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley were disclosed earlier this week.

Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS Board confirmed that C diff was a contributory factor - but not the main cause - in the death of a patient.

A second patient with the bug also died, but the health board stressed that C diff was not a factor in their death.

The outbreak at the Royal Alexandra Hospital came after 55 people were affected by C diff at the Vale of Leven Hospital in Alexandria, West Dunbartonshire, between December last year to June this year.

There the infection was the primary cause of death in nine patients, and was also a contributory factor in another nine.

A report last month described infection control facilities at the Vale of Leven as "inadequate".

Ms Baillie, the MSP for Dumbarton, restated calls for an independent inspection regime at hospitals. She said: "Our thoughts are with the families of the two patients who died in the Royal Alexandra. These latest cases show urgent action is needed to rid wards of C diff."

She added: "Self-assessment by hospitals and boards is woefully inadequate. An independent monitoring and inspection framework must be established, so that we never again witness death on the scale that occurred at the Vale of Leven Hospital."

The Labour MSP also made a fresh call for a fatal accident inquiry into the deaths at the Vale of Leven "so that every hospital in Scotland can learn lessons from what happened".

Share this article

Send this article to a friend »

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Reddit
• Facebook
• StumbleUpon

What are these?