Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, called on the health inspectorate yesterday to mount an independent inquiry into the spread of a virulent infection that has claimed 12 lives at Stoke Mandeville hospital in Buckinghamshire.
The bacterium, Clostridium difficile, has infected 300 patients at the hospital over the past 18 months. Alarm bells rang when it developed a more lethal strain, producing toxins causing severe diarrhoea that can be fatal for the very elderly or frail.
The Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS trust said yesterday that 21 patients at Stoke Mandeville were affected, with seven new cases confirmed since the beginning of the month.
It has put the NHS on alert to try to prevent the strain spreading to other hospitals which are struggling to contain the more widely-known superbug MRSA.
Ms Hewitt said her officials were talking with the Healthcare Commission about how the inquiry should be conducted. It will start as soon as the infection has been brought under control.
Ms Hewitt said she would introduce legislation later this year to make NHS trust chief executives and chairmen and chairwomen personally responsible for infection control.
Ms Hewitt announced the inquiry during a wide-ranging briefing for journalists on the eve of the NHS Confederation's annual conference in Birmingham.
She is planning this month to become the first health secretary to address the British Medical Association's annual conference.
As part of a charm offensive to win back support from doctors, she promised the government would start to pay more heed to clinical experts. Instead of "ruthless top-down performance management", there would be incentives for hospitals to improve their performance. The priority was to focus on the needs of patients.
A poll of NHS trust chief executives conducted by the NHS Confederation found that 62% did not expect the health service to deliver all the targets which ministers have set for it by 2008. And 84% believed the government's plans to stop increasing the NHS budget in real terms after 2008 "will have a negative impact on patient care".
Dame Gill Morgan, the confederation's chief executive, said: "Our ambitions are running ahead of what is possible ... . The government is right to be ambitious, and to demand excellence. But NHS chief executives are worried that the pace of change cannot continue without further investment."
Meanwhile, the HPA released fresh guidance to tackle another superbug called acinetobacter. The bacteria is carried by about 25% of people and can be found in water, soil and sewage as well as in food.
It is not as virulent as MRSA but has developed into strains which are resistant to almost all antibiotics.
