Superbug a political issue in Britain

LONDON — It's immune to most antibiotics and has killed hundreds of patients in hospitals across Britain. Now, a superbug has found its way into the British election campaign, with Tony Blair's government promising to slash infection rates.

For the leader of the opposition Conservatives, Michael Howard, the debate is particularly personal: His mother-in-law died of the infection.

"I mean, how hard is it to keep a hospital clean?" reads a Conservative billboard.

Britain has the second-worst record in Europe for methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, known as MRSA, a bacterium that can kill through blood poisoning and affects hospitals across the developed world.

"Today, when someone in your family gets sick, the worry is made 10 times worse because of Britain's dirty hospitals," Howard said in a speech ahead of the May 5 parliamentary vote.

But Blair's camp says the problem started under Conservative governments between 1990 and 1997.

"The Tories failed to tackle MRSA while in office. The Tories' only idea for tackling MRSA, allowing nurses to shut wards, has been slammed by nurses themselves," said Health Secretary John Reid. "You cannot tackle the superbug with a soundbite."

The NHS Confederation, representing the trusts that operate hospitals, was provoked to dispute Conservative claims. The confederation noted the Conservatives claimed 247 patients had been infected in one constituency. The actual number, the confederation said, was six.

Medical experts believe both sides are guilty of oversimplification. Some say eradicating the bug is already a losing battle.

"Ha, ha, ha," said Dr. Henry Chambers, chief of infectious diseases at San Francisco General Hospital when told of an election promise by Blair's Labour Party to halve infection rates by 2008.

"No way. Halving the MRSA rate is illusory. It's a fantasy," he said.

He's equally dismissive of the Conservatives' reliance on a chief nurse to oversee hygiene and upgrade cleaning standards.

"You can maybe slow it, maybe change the rate a little teeny bit and affect the level at any given period of time, but ultimately I think the organisms are so well established that there's not very much that can be done from the dirty hospital point of view," said Chambers, an expert on MRSA.