How common are Hospital Acquired Infections in the UK?
Hospital-acquired infections (HAI) are common in the United Kingdom affecting around 9% of the patient population and although comparisons between countries are difficult to make this does not seem to be atypically high. This figure of 9% was arrived at in studies published in 1981 and 1996 and may be out of date, but what is certain is that many of these cases are due to bacteria which are increasingly difficult to treat due to the evolution of antibiotic resistance. What is MRSA and how is it treated? Many different bacteria can be caught in hospital but the most notorious is MRSA – methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus some of which are resistant to many different antibiotics. MRSA was relatively rare in the early 1990s representing only about 1-2% of serious infections caused by this species however this figure rose to more than 45% within 10 years. MRSA is particularly feared in hospitals as it can cause an extremely wide range of serious disease such as pneumonia, septicaem
