Trust winningsuperbug fight

C. difficile infections are usually caused by antibiotics and older people are most at risk from infection, whilst MRSA is a type of bacterial infection that is resistant to a number of widely used antibiotics, making it more difficult to treat than other bacterial infections.

The Trust was also the only local authority to reduce levels of the Meticillin-Sensitive Staphylococcus Aureus (MSSA) organism which lives harmlessly on the skin of approximately one third of people but can cause problems when it enters the body.

Medical Director, Dr Anne Kilgallen told a recent meeting of the Trust board “that the Trust had exceeded this year’s MRSA bacteraemia and C. Difficile related disease reduction targets and in doing so was the only Trust in Northern Ireland to achieve this for both organisms.”

Dr Kilgallen added that “this had been accomplished by encouraging adherence to the evidence base, through a combination of accountability and learning from root cause analysis findings.”

She added that there was no target associated with MSSA bacteraemia however monitoring continued and the Western Trust was the only Trust to reduce levels of this organism during 2011-12.

Despite the overall achievement of the targets the Board noted a slight increase in C. difficile numbers for May 2012.