Over four years, more than 20,000 patients have suffered an MRSA infection in NHS hospitals - leading in many cases to unnecessarily long stays in hospital, and even death.

But, to give credit where it’s due, the health service has achieved what was previously thought to be unachievable in bringing down cases of the notorious superbug in recent years.

Even last year, leaked documents from within the Department of Health suggested they would miss the target set by John Reid as Health Secretary in 2004, that infections of methicillin-resistant Staphyloccocus aureus should be halved by March this year.

Outcry over dirty wards and hospital-acquired illness by inspectors, patients’ groups and the media led to ministers making infection control a top priority, with a much-trumpeted “deep clean” of hospitals being carried out earlier this year.

Patients, visitors and staff are all now expected to wash hands and use alcohol gels more vigilantly than before.

A mandatory “hygiene code” for hospitals, compliance with which has been subject by unannounced spot-checks by the Healthcare Commission, has also undoubtedly played a part.

Critics may quibble that the Department of Health has slightly shifted the goalposts, in effect granting themselves a three-month extension of the target, as the latest figures actually show rates of MRSA infection reported between April and June.

The timing of the announcement — three days before the start of a Labour Party conference that is desperately in need of some good news — may also attract sneers.

But figures for the first quarter of 2008 show that the health service was within a whisker of meeting the deadline, even on the strictest of markings, and the overall decline is a tremendous achievement.

In addition, the NHS has also reported a recent fall in the number of infections due to Clostridium difficile. The Government has said that it wants to cut rates of the bacterial infection by a third by 2010-11. The latest figures show that in the over-65s - the main age group affected - the number fell by 9 per cent in a year to 50,392 in 2007. But C. difficile bloodstream infections reported in the first quarter of this year appeared to reverse this trend, with a 6 per cent increase in cases in this age group.

As long as there are people in hospital there will be bugs there too. However, there are still wide variations between hospitals in rates of MRSA, which can only be partially explained by instances where the bacteria is acquired in the community or in places treating a higher proportion of the elderly patients who are most susceptible to infection.

This is also an ongoing, evolutionary war between the latest medical advances by humans and the bacteria which develop resistance against them.

Just last week, the Health Protection Agency gave warning that a number of bacteria, Clostridium Difficile, E.Coli, Klebsiella, Pseudomonas, are becoming increasingly resistant and some are also developing virulent toxins which can be life threatening.

There is no case for ministers to rest on their laurels.

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