MRSA hospitals to be named and shamed in quarterly reports

HOSPITALS plagued by the MRSA bug are set to be named and shamed and infection rates behind their walls revealed, it was confirmed last night.

Infection rates of the MRSA bug in individual hospitals will be made available to the public in quarterly reports. The number and frequency of occurrences of the highly contagious bug will be listed by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre for each public health centre and hospital.

The development is among health chiefs’ plans to reduce MRSA infections before the end of 2010 by about a third.

In April, rates of MRSA bloodstream infection across individual public hospitals nationwide will be disclosed for the first time.

The country’s disease watchdog will publish infections recorded for 2006 as well as 2007.

Quarterly lists of MRSA infections will then be published by the centre starting from the middle of the year.

“We will be producing them from the middle of 2008 and they will be made available to the public,” confirmed Maurice Kelly, the Health Protection Surveillance Centre’s communications manager.

MRSA infection details currently only list the number of infections found, not the locations. Previously detailed studies of MRSA occurrence in individual hospitals have been disputed by health chiefs.

MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus) is resistant to a range of antibiotics, including penicillin, and is one of the commonest causes of bloodstream infection in Ireland. Ireland has one of the highest rates of MRSA in the EU, with 588 cases in 2006.The Health Service Executive maintains the overuse of antibiotics in hospitals is a huge factor in the prevalence of MRSA in Ireland. Such overuse allows the bacteria to build resistance to a wide range of antibiotics.

Patient support groups have warned that hundreds of legal cases are set to be taken against the State by relatives of those infected by the bug, which mainly spreads in hospitals and healthcare facilities. Families who have lost loved ones to the deadly bug want a register of those who have died as a result of hospital-acquired infections.

However, Health Minister Mary Harney told the Dáil recently it was not possible to clearly identify fatalities directly linked to infections associated with healthcare.

The list of hospitals with MRSA infections to be published later this year will be made available to the public on the internet by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre.