Enter hospital at your peril!

Jul 3 2006

As many as two dozen patients at a British hospital have died after contracting the virulent stomach bug Clostridium difficile (C. diff).

An elderly woman, who apart from an eye infection, was fit and healthy has died from a bug her family say she picked up while in hospital.

The incident is the latest in a series of cases where 130 have been infected and 23 have died.

The nasty bug C. diff presents a nightmare scenario for hospitals because it is very difficult to control and once established it spreads rapidly.

The woman Mrs Florrie Field was fit and active and still working until she was admitted to Maidstone Hospital in March for treatment for an eye infection following a glaucoma operation.

When she returned home she was suffering from diarrhoea, which her GP diagnosed two weeks later as C. diff.

Mrs Fields' daughter, Brenda Charlton, with whom she was living in Maidstone, East Sussex, says she believes her mother caught the bug while in Maidstone Hospital and says her mother is the sixth person in the hospital to die from C. diff.

Florrie Field, 86, died in May from C. diff, and Maidstone hospital has already admitted that five patients died from an outbreak of the superbug between April and June.

However officials say Mrs Field was not one of the five known deaths but it intends to take Mrs Charlton's claims very seriously.

Mrs Charlton says she and her husband suspect that a patient in the next bed either was suffering or had suffered from C.diff and should have been isolated. Mrs Charlton says she very much regrets agreeing to her mother's admission to Maidstone Hospital.

Mrs Field died on 27 May at the Kent and Sussex Hospital in Tunbridge Wells after collapsing at home.

Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust said on Friday that C.diff was the definite cause of death of five patients while another 14 patients who died had contracted C. diff but it was a contributory factor and not the main cause of death.

Hospital officials say the infection is now under control and measures including stricter handwashing procedures, additional hospital cleaning and dedicated wards for those infected, have been introduced.

Mr and Mrs Charlton are making an official complaint about Mrs Field's treatment at Maidstone Hospital.

Maidstone Hospital is paying for extra nurses and 24-hour cleaners following the outbreak two months ago which has affected at least 115 patients and the infection is now believed to be under control.

The Kent hospital first noticed a rise in the number of cases in April and said it was a result of infected patients being sent to the hospital to be treated for diarrhoea when they could be treated at home.

The micro-organism responsible for C. diff infection causes diarrhoea, serious illness and death and those over-65 are considered to be particularly susceptible.

Each year thousands of people die with C. diff infection but how many deaths are directly caused by the bug is unclear as it usually affects elderly patients whose deaths can be deemed to be from other causes.

To date it is unclear how many patients have been killed by the bug at Maidstone Hospital.