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UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has pledged that every hospital in the country will undergo a ward-by-ward “deep clean” in a bid to drive out antibiotic-resistant infections from the NHS.
Mr Brown is promising that over the next 12 months all hospitals will be restored to a pristine state of cleanliness to rid them of MRSA and Clostridium difficile.
He said: “We know that over time, ingrained cleanliness problems build up, especially in hard-to-reach places like ceilings and ventilation ducts which cannot be dealt with by day-to-day cleaning.
“So over the next year, for the first time, every hospital will receive a ‘deep clean’ designed to return our hospitals to the state they were in when they were built brand-new.
“A ward at a time, walls, ceilings, fittings and ventilation shafts will be disinfected and scrubbed clean.”
Officials said it would be down to individual NHS trusts to decide how the cleaning programme was implemented.
However, it is thought wards could be closed for a week at a time while they are systematically cleansed.
The scheme was drawn up by health minister Professor Lord Darzi, based on experiences in the USA where many hospitals carry out similar cleaning drives.
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