Guidelines are needed on hygiene

THERE can be no excuse for the shocking conditions of hygiene revealed in a damning report that will inevitably be seen as a shameful league table of Ireland’s dirty hospitals.

By any standard, the first national audit of cleanliness in the State’s national acute hospitals is a slashing indictment of a system where patients are put at risk of infection from life-threatening bugs like MRSA which flourish in unclean environments.

Of the 54 publicly funded acute hospitals examined, only five were rated as having ‘good’ standards.

Astonishingly, this means that a staggering 91% of the country’s hospitals fell short of acceptable norms of hygiene while 48% were described as ‘poor’.

To say these findings are alarming would be an understatement. Thanks to this report, a glaring lack of national standards of hospital hygiene practice is now in evidence.

Furthermore, no uniform system of waste management exists to separate streams of hospital waste. Amazingly, no ground rules exist for such basic operations as cleaning a fridge.

Generally speaking, while facilities for hand washing are deemed adequate, questions continue to hang over the level of hand washing among hospital staff.

Nor is there any set pattern of hospital performance. The best in the country is Mallow General in County Cork while the worst is St Colmcille’s in Dublin, both small, local facilities.

At opposite ends of the league table are two hi-tech hospitals in Dublin. St James ranks among the best while Beaumont, one of the biggest and most costly in the country, is among the worst.

Conceivably, conditions in some hospitals are so bad it is fair to say if they were restaurants, they would be shut down.

Arguably, patients seem less likely to pick up deadly infections at home than in hospitals, rated on the basis of hygiene in A&E and other departments as well as hand-washing among staff.

Up to recently, according to a patient lobby group, such a basic ingredient in the fight against disease as soap was not provided in toilets at many hospitals.

As any patient will testify, overcrowded A&E wards, where people languish for days on trolleys, are sometimes so spattered with blood and vomit they resemble battle zones, ideal breeding grounds for bugs.

Based on a series of spot inspections, the damning report underpins growing public concerns over the low level of hygiene in hospitals across the country.

This situation is all the more disturbing as the Government spends millions of euro every year on contract cleaning.

Having invested over €68 million on cleaning services last year, the poor hygiene levels in many hospitals represent yet another glaring example of the Coalition’s failure to give taxpayers value for money.

Refreshingly, the British consultants involved have called a spade a spade. Pulling no punches, the report bears out the worst fears of lobby groups representing patients whose complaints over dreadful conditions in some hospitals prompted Health Minister Mary Harney to undertake a national audit.

What some will find perplexing is why the Health Service Executive (HSE) had to bring in British consultants to discover just how unhygienic many of our hospitals have become.

Surely that basic information was plain to see and could have been gathered by Irish experts, scientists and health and safety officials.

An emergency fund of €20m is now being made available to improve the situation in the country’s worst hospitals.

In the interests of public health, and to mark national hygiene awareness week, the HSE should immediately lay down uncompromising rules on hospital hygiene.

Unless staff members, management and contractors clean up their act, lives will continue to be put at risk.