Articles | Vaccines for hospital bugs expected

Vaccines for hospital bugs expected

Published: Monday, 14 July 2008, 6:56AM

Vaccines against two hospital bugs will be available within a decade, the Government's chief medical officer has said.

Professor Sir Liam Donaldson said immunising patients against MRSA and Clostridium difficile (C diff) would be a "big breakthrough".

He also said more research was needed into why Britain had seen a sharp increase in rates of cancer of the gullet in men.

The details which will be published in an annual report later, include a vaccine against C diff being developed within five years and one against MRSA made available within five to ten years.

Sir Liam said vaccines against the bugs could be used in two ways.

He told a newspaper: "One would be protecting the individual, somebody who was going into hospital for a major operation."

He added: "The other way of looking at it would be to try to interrupt the chain of transmission - to study the pattern of infection in the community, in hospitals and nursing homes, and try to eradicate the pools of infection."

However, Sir Liam said infection control measures - including nurses washing their hands - would still need to be in place, since the threat of a new infection emerging would always be present.

"You might be able to get close to eliminating them [with a vaccine]. But if you didn't concentrate on hygiene measures, something else would come along to replace them," he said.

In April, figures showed a slight rise in the number of cases of MRSA across England after months of decline.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) released data showing a 0.6 per cent rise in the number of cases during October to December 2007 compared with July to September 2007.

The data showed there were 1,087 cases of MRSA during October to December 2007.

Meanwhile, figures for C diff showed an 8 per cent drop, to 9,872 cases in patients aged 65 and over between October and December 2007 compared with the previous quarter.