HIGH-RISK patients will be tested for the MRSA superbug as soon as they are admitted to hospital and trust chief executives will be held legally accountable if they fail to adopt tough hygiene measures under new government plans.

Ministers announced the proposals yesterday as figures from the Health Protection Agency, the Government’s infection watchdog, indicated a decline in MRSA incidents and named the best and worst hospitals in the country.

John Reid, the Health Secretary, said last night that he would be consulting on plans for a statutory hygiene code covering hospitals, care homes and nursing homes in a bid to drive out the deadly infection.

The disclosure followed the publication of official figures showing that cases of MRSA infection in NHS hospitals had hit their lowest level since mandatory records began in 2001.

The figures, which covered the period from April to September 2004, showed an overall drop of 6 per cent in cases of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) on the same period in 2003.

Announcing the figures, Lord Warner, the Health Minister, said that the NHS had reached “a turning point” in its battle with the antibiotic-resistant superbug, which claims 1,000 lives a year. About 5,000 people die annually from hospital-acquired infections.

Lord Warner said that the introduction of a rapid technique to test patients for MRSA on their arrival in hospital would, he hoped, lower the levels in struggling trusts.

The system, which is being piloted in Birmingham Heartlands Hospital, will identify patients with MRSA within two hours rather than several days. The saliva swab is analysed on-site by a machine that extracts DNA from the sample and detects whether MRSA genes are present.

Further trials are to begin in London soon to help health leaders to produce a protocol as to what should be done with patients once they are identified as infected.

A “targeted” version of the system has proved effective in America, the Netherlands and Switzerland, where high-risk patients — such as those referred by nursing homes — were swabbed reaching hospital.

However, Lord Warner conceded that the high rates of MRSA in Britain may preclude such an approach. He said that the Government was prepared to introduce the programme nationwide if it was found to be efficient and cost-effective.

He said that the public could begin to feel confident that the battle with the superbug was being won. He said: “We’re not complacent, we’re not trumpeting this and we’re not saying it’s a glorious triumph for the Government. We’re not saying it’s the end of the story, but we are saying there’s been a significant change of direction by the looks of it.”

However, opposition politicians and some scientists criticised the Government’s claims that the number of infections were at their lowest since 2001.

Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, said: “Blair’s Government has failed to make clean hospitals a priority.

Suddenly, a few months before a likely election and eight years after no action, we get flawed figures that smack of pre-election trickery.”

Mark Enright, a biochemist at the University of Bath, said that he was not confident that MRSA was under control and the small overall drop was probably a seasonal fluctuation.

Brian Duerden, the Government’s Inspector of Microbiology, said that 300,000 hospital-acquired infections were reported each year, of which 18,000 were more dangerous blood-borne infections. About half of these involve strains of the staphylococcus aureus bacteria, of which 40 per cent — about 4,000 — are cases of MRSA.

The figures for April to September last year show that 3,519 NHS patients in England were infected with MRSA, compared with 3,940 in the previous six months and 3,598 in the same period of 2001.

INCREASING RESISTANCE

Britain’s 9 per cent rate of hospital-acquired infections was within the 6-10 per cent range found in modern healthcare systems

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