New measures are to be introduced to deal with the threat from hospital superbugs amid growing concern that thousands of patients are succumbing to the drug-resistant infections each year.
Doctors and nurses will be encouraged to wash their hands far more frequently, with more hand basins provided on the wards as part of a campaign formulated by the Department of Health.
Officials are considering whether nurses should carry around antiseptic wipes with them to avoid spreading organisms such as MRSA (methycillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) from patient to patient.
Visitors to hospitals are to be told they have to wash their hands before going on the ward. The public will be made more aware of the dangers of poor hygiene, and that it is costing the NHS millions of pounds each year to combat the bugs.
Ministers have been persuaded to act decisively, before Britain sees the emergence of dangerous new organisms that are totally drug-resistant. The example of the turmoil wreaked by the Sars virus - a new agent for which there is no known cure - has been a stark warning.
Around 5,000 patients each year in the UK die of hospital-acquired infections with an unknown number of them due to MRSA, which infects the wounds of patients who have been weakened by surgery or illness and spreads rapidly through the body, often leading to multiple organ failure.
University College Hospital in London recorded, last December, the first known case of MRSA in a patient which was resistant to the drug linezolid. This is the last line of defence against the organism and is rarely used in case resistance to it starts to build up in the population.
More than 7,000 cases of MRSA were recorded in England and Wales last year, compared with 4,767 in 2001 but it is not known how many patients died from the bug.
It is estimated 100,000 people a year pick up some form of infection while in hospital.
A Government source told The Observer: 'Infection is a growing problem in institutions around the world. It's not just hospitals - ocean liners and holiday camps suffer from it as well.'
The growth of drug-resistant bacteria is a matter of concern to microbiologists. In America, the first cases emerged last year of organisms that are fully resistant to vancomycin, a commonly used and powerful antibiotic.
There is uncertainty about how much dirt in hospitals contributes to the problem. Although most of the danger lies in transmission between staff and patients, some experts are convinced a general lack of hygiene contributes to the problem.
Dr Peter Wilson, consultant microbiologist at UCLH said: 'If you have a dusty hospital, and most dust is made up of skin scale (dead skin) it (MRSA) will survive there for one or two months.
'All you have to do is run your finger along the dust to pick it up. Most of the MRSA is transmitted on people's hands, but some of it is floating in the air between patients.'
He said the Netherlands and Denmark had successfully reduced levels of infection, by being very strict over hand-washing and also isolating patients the moment they test positive for the infection.
Others want to see a return to more stringent cleaning regimes within hospitals. The Government has put increasing pressure on hospitals to have cleaner wards, but some blame the move towards the contracting-out of cleaning services from the NHS, which began in the Eighties when responsibility for a clean ward was taken away from matrons.
