BRITISH PUBLIC HOSPITALS CAN'T AFFORD CLEANERS

The scale of the reduction of cleaning staff gives firm backing to the widespread belief that wards have become dirtier and less safe. The figures, compiled by Unison, the public service union, showed that there were 55,000 hospital cleaners, either NHS employees or working in the hospitals for private cleaning contractors, last year. In 1984, there were more than 100,000. Unison demanded last night that the Health Secretary, John Reid, urgently review the number of cleaners needed. The union's general secretary, Dave Prentis, who has spoken to The Observer about his own brush with death after contracting MRSA, said: 'It is wrong that people have to recover from operations in these conditions, that visitors have to come into them and staff have to work in them. You wouldn't tolerate these levels of dirt at home, so why do we allow them in hospitals?' He said that since the introduction of market testing for cleaning services in 1983, controlling infections had become more difficult.

The figures were greeted with alarm last night by doctors and patients' groups. Claire Rayner, president of the Patients' Association, who herself contracted MRSA following a knee operation, said: 'These figures are terrifying. Cleaners have left because they are often blamed when it's not their fault; they feel demoralised and still they are paid a very low wage.' Dr Paul Grime, the British Medical Association's representative on hospital hygiene, said: 'A 50 per cent drop in the number of cleaners seems quite high to us. There are lots of factors behind MRSA but cleaning is a very important one.'

There is growing concern about how a drop in hygiene standards has contributed to the rise of MRSA - or methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus - which was contracted by 100,000 people last year in hospitals and is the cause of about 5,000 deaths a year. Rates of the bug are thought to have trebled over the past 10 years.

A spokesman for Reid said the drop in numbers of cleaners was not disputed, but that Department of Health figures showed that in 1986 there were 88,000 cleaners. He also said the size of the NHS estate had reduced by 20 per cent in the past two decades - therefore there was less space to clean.

MRSA Support, a patient group, said its own tests showed that the superbug was surviving cleaning regimes. Tony Field, its founder, said: 'We went to two Midlands hospitals and did swabs and found high rates of MRSA there.'

Official figures released last month showed that fewer than half of hospitals had good levels of cleanliness. Only half of the 1,184 hospitals in England had 'acceptable levels', while 27 were considered poor or unacceptable.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL hospitals and health insurance schemes should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the very poor and minimal regulation.

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