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Managers at a UK hospital trust are embarking on an innovative project to cut the number of hospital-acquired infections.
The Government is giving some £1.1m to University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust to help in its fight against resistant pathogens.
The money will be used to pay for extra bedside equipment and motion-triggered public announcement devices to encourage people to wash their hands properly.
Cash will also go towards introducing an antibacterial bodywash for all patients to help reduce the spread of MRSA through wards.
Hospital managers had to submit a bid for a proportion of £5m set aside for the East Midlands region of the UK as part of a £50m national initiative to tackle agents such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile.
Pauline Tagg, the trust’s director of infection prevention and control, said: “This is a huge pot of money that we are delighted to receive.
“Reducing infections in our hospitals is our number one clinical priority, and this cash will go a long way to drive down the number of infection cases we have to deal with each year.
“We have already seen a 65% drop in C difficile infections, but we don’t want to stop there. We are not complacent and want to do everything in our power to slash infection numbers even further.”
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University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust: www.uhl-tr.nhs.uk
