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Health Care-Associated Infections

I come to this debate as someone who has actually cleaned hospitals in a previous job. I have cleaned up after patients who have been suffering from the conditions in question, and it is tough to do so, particularly when dealing with something like Clostridium difficile, and the sheer number of spores that are produced in the faeces of someone with diarrhoea as a result of C. difficile. They are produced in enormous numbers, and it is quite tough to clean all the surfaces involved to ensure that there is no transmission from the environment. I did that work many years ago, so the situation is not new. C. difficile has been with us for many decades, and it is only recently that there have been particular problems, which I shall come to later. I want to start by talking about methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. I have listened to debates on this issue so many times in this House. I listened to what the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) said, and I believe that he oversimplifies a complicated subject. He makes comparisons with other countries, such as the Netherlands, but when we are dealing with MRSA, we are dealing with something like 17 different strains. The strains prevalent in hospitals in places such as the Netherlands are different from those prevalent in this country.