Hospitals: Infectious Diseases

(asked on 2nd February 2016) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what plans his Department has for measures to reduce rates of hospital-acquired infections.


Answered by
 Portrait
Ben Gummer
This question was answered on 5th February 2016

There is no simple solution to reducing infections in hospitals or the wider health economy. Thus as part of implementation of the UK 5 Year Antimicrobial Resistance Strategy 2013 – 2018, a wide ranging programme of work is already underway to reduce the incidence of infections. The Strategy is available at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-5-year-antimicrobial-resistance-strategy-2013-to-2018

Plans are in hand to strengthen local leadership and reporting to support the drive to reduce healthcare associated infections. There are national evidence based guidelines for preventing healthcare associated infections and local and national surveillance to help us identify areas where more focused attention and effort is needed are part of this programme. Our expert scientific advisory committee is currently evaluating relevant data to identify interventions that can be used to reduce infections such as Escherichia coli blood stream infections.

In addition a new indicator will bring together data into one website to help the National Health Service understand that cleanliness, infection prevention and control and antibiotic usage are linked issues which require urgent coherent action. This will support our aim of ensuring local delivery and more information will be in the second Strategy progress report due to be published in the spring.

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