If I fall ill, I want to be taken to a hospital belonging to one of the following NHS Trusts:

• Barking, Havering and Redbridge Hospitals NHS Trust
• Kingston Hospital NHS Trust
• Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
• St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust
• St Helen’s and Knowsley Hospitals NHS Trust

The Healthcare Commission has recently conducted unannounced, spot check inspections of 51 NHS Trusts (about a third of the total) and found that only the five in the above list fully met hygiene and cleanliness standards designed to minimise outbreaks of MRSA, C.difficile and the like.

Other highlights of the inspection report:

• at three Trusts, Bromley Hospitals NHS Trust, Ipswich Hospitals NHS Trust and Ashford and St Peter’s NHS Trust, serious breaches of the hygiene code were found and improvement notices were issued “to safeguard patients”
• more than half of Trusts were failing to keep all areas clean and well-maintained
• 20% of Trusts did not properly comply with rules on decontamination of instruments and equipment used with patients
• one in eight Trusts had inadequate isolation facilities for infected patients

So to recap: more than 90% of our hospitals are unclean.

One more time so we don’t miss the point: almost all the hospitals in the fifth richest country on Earth are dirty.

This is not news to me.  About six weeks ago my father was hospitalised with an MRSA infection.  In fairness, his local hospital did manage to find a side room for him in an attempt to isolate the infection and even allocated an adjacent lavatory for his exclusive use.

However, they undermined these steps by cleaning his side room precisely once during his eight day stay and failing in any discernible attempt to police use of the lavatory, which was in almost constant use by other patients and their visitors.  Particularly worrying was when I left my father’s room at the end of one visit to find a hospital worker emerging from that lavatory and zipping up his fly as he did so.

Barely one in three of the fellow visitors I saw wandering on and off the ward during this period bothered to use the disinfectant gel dispensers on the corridor leading to and from the ward.

Today – Monday 24 November 2008 – is, of course, a good day to bury this kind of bad news while Arrivederci Gordon and Captain Darling distract attention with some sleight of hand over tax.

It’s another indication of the cluelessness of this administration that they are ramping up the froth levels over a potential increase in the top rate of income tax for the highest earning one percent of the population rather than deal with the basic, bread-and-butter issues that I still believe matter most to voters.

Unemployment is on the rise and the government accepts it needs to stimulate the economy and create jobs.  Well, how about buying some mops and disinfectant and employing a few people to clean the fucking hospitals?

11½ years and they still don’t get it.  Jesus wept.