HUNDREDS of babies, many just a few days old, have been infected with the deadly superbug MRSA in hospitals across Britain. A study by the Patients Association has found that it is now commonplace for babies aged from a few days to four weeks to catch MRSA.

The Department of Health is so concerned about the increased number of cases of babies with MRSA — methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus — that it has commissioned a £140,000 study into the problem.

Some babies have caught the infection from their mothers but others have picked it up in neonatal units. The trend has surprised health experts because neonatal units are considered to be the cleanest wards in a hospital.

Professor Hugh Pennington of Aberdeen University, a microbiologist and expert in hospital-acquired infection, said: “If babies are getting MRSA, that is of concern because it shows there is something seriously wrong with the infection control procedures.”

He said it was likely the infection had been carried into the neonatal units by people walking from ward to ward. “If we had been more aggressive in tackling the problem, like the Dutch and the Scandinavians, this would not have happened.”

Hospitals in the survey refused to say whether any babies had died from the bug, citing patient confidentiality.

Babies who catch MRSA from their mothers carry the bug from the moment they are born. This only puts them at risk, however, if the MRSA gets into a wound or the bloodstream.

But hospitals questioned by the Patients Association have disclosed that babies are being infected with wound and bloodstream infections while being treated on neonatal units. A baby being cared for by Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust was found to have MRSA at just eight days old. In the past three years the trust said 38 babies aged under four weeks had been found to have MRSA while being treated by the trust.

At the University Hospital of North Staffordshire NHS Trust, the youngest baby found to have MRSA in the bloodstream was 19 days old. Over the past three years two other babies of less than four weeks had contracted MRSA in their bloodstreams while being treated.

The picture is similar in hospitals across England. Eastbourne District General hospital admitted it had to close its baby unit for a week last year because five babies were carrying MRSA.

The Patients Association questioned the 30 NHS hospitals with the worst MRSA records to gather information for its Clean Hospital Summit due in April. The conference is being chaired by Claire Rayner, the association’s president, who herself became infected with MRSA during a routine operation at an NHS hospital.

Katherine Murphy, communications director of the association, said: “We would not previously have contemplated that babies being treated in neonatal units, which we think of as being scrupulously clean, could be infected with MRSA.

Dr Mike Sharland, a paediatric infectious disease consultant at St George’s hospital in south London, where six babies aged less than a year old have caught MRSA in the past year, said the NHS accepted that infant infections were a growing problem.

Earlier this month it emerged that a boy aged three who banged his head in a playground accident died five weeks later after picking up the MRSA superbug in hospital.

The number of people dying from MRSA has doubled in the past five years from 487 to 955, according to the Office for National Statistics. Experts believe the actual number is much higher as MRSA is not always mentioned on death certificates. The National Audit Office has estimated 5,000 deaths a year from hospital-acquired infections.

Additional reporting by Sarah Keenlyside

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