Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what information his Department holds on the number of incidences of an outbreak of c-difficile Infection in NHS hospitals after a single case of that infection was diagnosed.

Public Health England (PHE) does not run surveillance of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) outbreaks. Data are captured at the case level and this is published as national statistics on the incidence of the disease.

Cases are categorised based on their timing of detection, in relation to admission to hospital and the patient’s prior exposure to hospital. The national statistics do not group cases into outbreaks. If there is clinical suspicion of an outbreak, then local Infection Prevention and Control teams will investigate further but this is outside the scope of national mandatory surveillance.