Link: News in Brief - Times Online.
Infections caused by hospital superbugs are falling, the latest figures show, but the Government will still miss a key target to halve rates of MRSA infections (David Rose writes). Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, said this month that the NHS was on course to meet the MRSA target by the end of March. But the Department of Health said yesterday that it would grant itself at least a three-month extension. To achieve the target cut of 50 per cent of the 7,700 infections in 2003-04, the NHS would have to limit rates to just 3,850 cases this financial year. Yet figures from the Health Protection Agency show a total of 2,376 MRSA cases in the first half of 2007-08 alone, suggesting that the NHS will miss the target by a long way this year.
