This article is from page 12 of the 2005-09-20 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 12 JPG
THE Tanaiste and Minister for Health Mary Harney admitted this week in Clare that she is concerned about hygiene in our hospitals, as basic precautions such as washing hands are not being carried out.
‘Hand washing is one of the most effec- tive ways of ensuring that we don’t pass on infection. That is hand washing by profes- sionals, all the staff but also by those visit- ing patients. I think we need to heighten the awareness of the importance of hand wash- ing,’ she said.
Ms Harney said she was also confident that the HSE would get to the bottom of what was happening about MRSA in hospi- tals in the region.
While the Mid Western Regional Hospital Ennis reported that just over 1.25 per cent of its patients were discovered with the an- tibiotic resistant bacteria, the Mid Western Regional Hospital in Limerick has so far been unable to provide any figures relating to the bacteria.
“The results of the MRSA audit or the hygiene audit, which we will have later this month, I think will tell us a lot of informa- tion like what is happening at the moment in the hospitals. We are paying huge money for hospital cleaning contracts and we have to make sure we get the best for that.
The Minister also outlined plans in the fu- ture to ensure there were more single rooms in hospital and more isolation facilities.
These plans will not be implemented in
the short term, due to the cost, Ms Harney admitted. New buildings and refurbished facilities will have a larger number of sin- gle rooms and greater isolation facilities for OTM NLA
“We have a large number of hospitals in the country. It will be extremely expensive and take some time before we will move to that situation in Ireland. But, certainly in the context of building new facilities, and in refurbishing existing facilities, we will be looking at a larger number of single rooms and greater isolation facilities for patients that are affected with an infection. ”
Yesterday the Tanaiste launched a new campaign encouraging hand washing in health care buildings through out the coun- try.