Superbug 'czar' targets London's dirty hospitals

A superbug czar has been hired in London to drive deadly infections out of the health service.

Colin Ovington has vowed to halt the spread of stomach bug Clostridium difficile and halve rates of hospital infection MRSA.

The former nurse was appointed amid growing national concern that hospitals are failing to meet targets to reduce infection on their premises.

Cases of C. difficile are on the rise and, despite improvements in dealing with MRSA, some 1,200 patients contracted it in the year to April.

Mr Ovington, the first "infection turnaround director", will monitor performance at every London trust and order managers of unhygienic hospitals to clean up their act.

The move comes weeks after a report into the C. difficile scandal at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, where 91 patients died from the bug because of dirty wards and poor care.

Mr Ovington was previously director of infection control and nursing at the former Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham, a major acute trust.

He said he would fight "passionately" to make sure fewer patients contract infections in hospital.

"If that means me going in [to hospitals] and turning their commodes upside down to see how clean they are, or seeing how clean their wards are and asking what products they use, then I will."

He has already ordered trusts to examine the report into the failings at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells and prove they are not making the same mistakes.

The Healthcare Commission, the national watchdog, found a list of errors and bad practice with nurses telling patients in need of the lavatory to "go in their beds" and leaving them in soiled sheets. Poor standards may have contributed to as many as 331 dying.

Mr Ovington said: "I have asked [trusts] to measure themselves against the report, look at the criticisms and to make sure that it won't happen [in London]. I would be surprised if we don't find some of it, but I would be surprised if we find it all. I would like to think we won't find the worst."

Last week, a quarter of trusts across the country - including 19 in London - were criticised by the watchdog over failing hygiene standards.