Maintain pressure on reforms to protect NHSScottish MPs call for national C diff probe
The Labour Party in Scotland has called for an inquiry into an outbreak of C difficile that caused nine deaths at a hospital in Scotland to be extended across the country.
The Vale of Leven Hospital suffered the outbreak in April, and an inquiry into the outbreak has been ordered by Scotland’s health secretary Nicola Sturgeon.
But following recent outbreaks of the bacteria elsewhere, Labour health spokeswoman Cathy Jameson called for a wider remit for the inquiry.
Similar problems have troubled Elgin’s Dr Gray’s Hospital, which stopped admissions to two wards after two elderly patients died in May, and Kirkwall’s Balfour Hospital, which had two deaths in January where C diff was a factor.
Previously 18 people died from the superbug in Gartnavel Hospital, Glasgow, in 2008, and ten people in 2007.
Ms Jameson said: ‘We need to learn lessons from what happened during recent outbreaks in Glasgow and the north of Scotland, as well as the Vale of Leven.’
The inquiry is also short of a chairman, after Lord Coulsfield stepped down due to health reasons.
A Scottish Government spokesman said that the remit of the inquiry had not been set as there was not yet a replacement chair. He added: ‘By law the chairman must be consulted on the terms of reference of the inquiry.’
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