Hand wash campaign saved 10,00 lives

The number of superbug cases in hospitals and health care centres has fallen thanks to a new campaign to improve hand hygiene, it has been claimed.

A new report published on the website of the British Medical Journal found that the amount of soap and other hand cleaning products used in such infirmaries had more than tripled since a campaign to improve standards began.

Concerns over the cleanliness of hospitals in recent years has been one of the reasons many people have opted to receive private health care from an organisation like Bupa.

So-called superbugs were much talked about during the middle years of the past decade and in response the Department of Health launched the Clean Your Hands campaign.

As part of the scheme, alcohol gels were put at patients' bedsides and posters were placed near ward entrances as well as in toilets.

Within three years of the launch, the amount of money spent by health professionals on cleaning products trembled and the rates of diseases such as MRSA dropped by more than 40 per cent.

Around 10,000 lives have been saved because of the campaign, Dr Sheldon Stone from the Royal Free University College London Medical School claimed.

A spokesman from the Department of Health said: "The Clean Your Hands campaign was successful in its aim to highlight the importance of good hand hygiene practice across the NHS. We know this has been successful.

"The challenge now is to ensure the NHS embeds the good practice highlighted in the campaign to achieve our ambition to wipe out avoidable healthcare-associated infection.

"We know real progress has been made in this area as MRSA bloodstream infections have dropped by 41 per cent and C. difficile by 30 per cent across the NHS in England since 2009/10."