Super-bug kills 12 patients at Stoke Mandeville

Twelve patients have died and hundreds more have been infected after an outbreak of a lethal bug at a leading specialist hospital.

Doctors warned today that the strain of super-bug Clostridium difficile at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Oxfordshire posed a grave threat.

More than 300 patients have been infected and attempts to control it have failed. The intestinal bug causes severe diarrhoea and is resistant to the alcohol gels used to combat MRSA. The Health Protection Agency said washing hands in soap and water was necessary to eliminate the bug and powerful disinfectants were needed to clean the wards. Nationally, cases in the bug have soared from fewer than 1,000 in 1990 to 43,672 in 2004.

Microbiologist Andrew Berrington, of the National Clostridium difficile Standards Group, said: "It is a serious-problem and in some ways more serious than MRSA."

Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust - which is responsible for Stoke Mandeville - said everything possible was being done to control the outbreak, which began in 2003.