---

Health: Hospital Infections

Answer

Information on numbers of deaths from infections contracted in hospital is not available. Death certificates rarely specify the place where an infection was acquired. Death certificates do, however, record the place of death. The Office for National Statistics publishes analyses of deaths in England and Wales with meticillin resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) or clostridium difficile (C. difficile) mentioned on the death certificate. The following tables present the number of death certificates mentioning MRSA from 1999-2005 and C. difficile in 1999 and from 2001-2005 by place of death. Information on C. difficile is not available for 2000 (please see note 3).

Table 1: Number of deaths mentioning MRSA¹ by place of death, England and Wales, 1999 to 2005²
	Own home	NHS general hospital	Non-NHS general hospital	Hospice	NHS nursing home	Non- NHS nursing home	Private residential home	Local authority residential home	Other	Total places
1999	4	422	4	1	4	25	7	2	18	487
2000	10	583	2	3	8	30	10	3	20	669
2001	11	649	1	3	9	32	11	1	17	734
2002	7	720	1	4	7	35	9	2	15	800
2003	12	855	2	2	15	36	15	4	14	955
2004	24	1,023	8	6	6	58	18	5	20	1,168
2005	22	1,412	5	9	13	87	37	9	35	1,629
Total	115	6,893	31	34	74	392	134	31	182	7,886
Notes:
¹ Identified using the methodology described in Griffiths C, Lamagni TL, Crowcroft NS, Duckworth G and Rooney C (2004) Trends in MRSA in England and Wales: Analysis of Morbidity and Mortality Data for 1993-2002 (Health Statistics Quarterly 21, 15-22).
² Deaths occurring in each calendar year.

	Own home	NHS general hospital	Non-NHS general hospital	Hospice	NHS Nursing home	Non-NHS nursing home	Private residential home	Local authority residential home	Other places	Total
1999	9	881	3	0	13	20	11	1	37	975
2001	8	1,106	3	3	11	24	12	0	47	1,214
2002	10	1,322	3	1	14	25	3	2	48	1,428
2003	15	1,665	2	6	14	28	9	6	43	1,788
2004	15	2,075	4	3	11	56	17	8	58	2,247
2005	28	3,512	3	8	24	80	32	8	112	3,807
total	85	10,561	18	21	87	233	84	25	345	11,459
Notes:
¹ Identified using the methodology outlined in annual ONS reports on deaths involving C. difficile
² Place of death records where the death occurred. This information does not imply anything about where any infection was acquired.
3 Data is not available for 2000, as deaths were coded to ICD=9 in this year. C. difficile is not easily identifiable in ICD-9. Data from 1999 and 2002-2005 were coded to ICD-10, where there is a specific code for C. difficile.
4 Deaths registered in 1999, deaths occurring in 2001-2005.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

4383; 693 c94WA

Session

2006-07

Subjects

Death Hospitals Infectious diseases NHS Patients MRSA Clostridium

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk