Elizabeth Wilson's baby daughter Meg nearly died after contracting methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a hospital-acquired infection she believes was picked up after a nurse failed to take basic precautions when dressing Meg's scalded foot.
As a result of this elementary blunder Meg - who was then 11 weeks old - came within hours of death and was forced to spend a week in a specialist NHS burns unit 40 miles from her home at a cost to the health service of thousands of pounds.
The previous week, Ms Wilson had taken her daughter to the casualty department at the Homerton hospital in Hackney, London, after Meg had been accidentally splashed with hot coffee. In theory, it should have been a routine and uncomplicated visit.
"Meg's foot was clearly blistered and suppurating, and I noticed the nurse was dressing the wound with her bare hands. I remember thinking 'she should be wearing rubber gloves' but - and I beat myself up about this now - I didn't make a fuss," she recalls.
Ms Wilson did repeatedly raise the issue that burns can become infected and a swab was then taken from Meg's wound. Staff told her that the results would be ready within three days.
However, laboratory delays meant she was not informed of the results until six days after the swab was taken when she was making a routine visit to the Homerton to have Meg's dressing changed.
The delay meant Meg had been suffering from the effects of MRSA for nearly a week - and treated by her mother with nothing more than Calpol - paracetamol for babies.
"'You will have heard of the hospital killer bug MRSA' were the doctor's actual words," recalls Ms Wilson.
"At first he said there was no need to worry about it. But it became clear that Meg, who was increasingly weak and floppy, was very ill.
"I could see the staff talking among themselves, and then the top consultant was summoned. The next minute we were being rushed in an ambulance to a specialist burns unit in Chelmsford with a nurse and doctor in attendance."
Meg, now 14 weeks old, has recovered and is in good health. But her mother is still racked with guilt over her failure to kick up a fuss.
"I think about how they might not even have taken the swabs in the first place without my promptings, how the test results should have come back more quickly, how there was no sense of urgency until it all went wrong, and how this must be happening to thousands of other people."
Ms Wilson is still in shock over the incident and although friends are urging her to pursue the matter, she is undecided - like many people who are instinctively pro-NHS - whether to lodge a formal complaint with the Homerton.
A successful journalist writing for women's magazines, Ms Wilson says: "If it happened to me, middle-class, aware of my rights and clued up on medical matters, who knows what might happen to people that aren't.
"The scalding is one thing, and that's my fault; but although the NHS saved the life of my daughter once staff realised that she had contracted MRSA, it was the NHS who put her into danger in the first place."
Useful links
General information on MRSA
Screening hospital staff for MRSA
MRSA - what nursing and residential homes need to know
Controlling MRSA in hospitals
Practical advice on MRSA
