DES Browne, the Scottish Secretary, intervened yesterday in the scandal over an outbreak of a fatal hospital bug.
He said that "best practice" from NHS hospitals in England – where infections from Clostridium difficile and MRSA have fallen as a result of "deep clean" programmes – may have been ignored north of the Border because of anti-English sentiment.
His
remarks followed the outbreak at the Vale of Leven Hospital in West Dunbartonshire, where nine deaths since December have been directly linked to C diff and nine others had it as a contributory factor.
Mr Browne, appearing before the Scottish affairs committee at Westminster, said: "We need to be very careful we don't get into the situation where we are not doing things just because the English are doing them, and denying ourselves access to the best practice."
He said that, following a "deep clean" programme – which has not been implemented in Scotland – outbreaks of C diff had fallen by 23 per cent.
Figures from the Health Protection Agency show the number of MRSA cases fell by 18 per cent between July and September last year, while C diff cases were down 21 per cent.
It is understood there is concern in Labour circles that the SNP administration in Edinburgh ridiculed last year's demand from Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, for a cross-border NHS "deep clean".
Some experts believe that to be a pointless exercise, saying a hospital can be cleaned from ward to ward one day, only for infections to be spread by new patients the next.
The full article contains 262 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
