BBC man tells of battle with superbug

A top BBC reporter told today how he fell victim to a hospital superbug during a routine knee operation.

Education correspondent Mike Baker underwent keyhole surgery to correct a torn ligament in his knee at Ravenscourt Park Hospital, Chiswick.

He was discharged but while recovering at home, his knee swelled and began to ooze fluid.

Mr Baker, 47, had MSSA - methicillinsensitive staphylococcus aureus - which is similar to the drug-resistant strain, MRSA, but responds better to antibiotics and is not as deadly.

He was admitted to Kingston Hospital, where he had to undergo more surgery, a series of tests and a course of powerful drugs during an 18-day nightmare that left him with permanent damage to his left knee. He has spoken of his concern at the hospital's hygiene during a national outbreak of MRSA, saying: "The toilets were a disaster area.

"There were no hot water taps nor disinfectant handwash in the toilets, so you could not clean your hands properly. Goodness knows how many bugs were left on the door handles.

"Nurses did not always wash their hands between patients. The cleaning was often dilatory. No one appeared to supervise the cleaners and none was done at weekends." Carole Heatly, chief executive at Kingston Hospital NHS Trust, said: "We can only apologise for Mr Baker's experience. As he has identified in his article, our staff are superb, as is our clinical care. However, we recognise that there is still more for us to do to improve cleanliness on site, which is a hugely important area for us."

A spokesman for Ravenscourt Park said: "Unfortunately, problems like this can occur as a result of hospital operations but they are most commonly the result of infections that already exist on the patient's own skin and subsequently worsen."

Infections such as MSSA and MRSA are thought to contribute to about 20,000 deaths a year and experts fear there could be as many as 700,000 cases a year.