LONDON, Nov
23 (Reuters) - About 5,000 patients die every year from infections
they pick up in hospitals in England, a parliamentary report said
on Thursday. Basic hygiene, such as health workers not washing
their hands, was a large part of the problem, the report by the
House of Commons Public Accounts Committee said. It said the problem
was costing the National Health Service (NHS) up to one billion
pounds ($1.41 billion) a year. "The best estimates we have
suggest that each year there are at least 100,000 cases of hospital-acquired
infection in England causing around 5,000 deaths," the report
said. A Department of Health spokesman said from April every NHS
trust -- the authorities responsible for running hospitals --
would have to monitor infection rates and, from the year after,
would be obliged to publish them. "The estimate is that around
15 percent (of hospital infection) is preventable. A very large
proportion is there because we are treating a greater number of
elderly people who are vulnerable to such infections," the
spokesman added. Britain"s state-funded NHS was once widely
admired for its high standard of care available to all, but the
cash-strapped health service has lurched from crisis to crisis
in recent years, including being swamped by a flu epidemic last
winter.
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