How Many Wards Will C-Diff Close?

The games up for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, following their admission that a ward at the Victoria Infirmary is closed due to an outbreak of Clostridium difficile.

C Difficile!

I use the NHS and founded the 'Campaign For A New Victoria' to campaign for the retention of Accident & Emergency in the area and now at the site across from the existing building. As a result I keep in close contact with a large number of the clinicians, nurses, health care workers and administrative staff at the Victoria and have been told by them to expect a large number of ward closures due to C-Diff, and a range of other hospital acquired infections, in the near future - all across NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and particularly at the Victoria.

The old and crumbling fabric of the current Victoria Infirmary provides the perfect conditions for bacteria to grow. That is why no one is against the creation of New Victoria buildings. However, the creation of new buildings should not endanger life either.

The creation of a Victoria ACAD is not the provision of a new "hospital", as NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and the Labour Party would have us believe. An ACAD is a day clinic/health centre without A&E that will make the majority of the population this side of the river dependant on the remote Southern General for emergency admission.

Nevertheless, the current state of the Victoria Infirmary emphasises the need to take urgent action to update the condition of our hospital buildings and to tackle hospital acquired infections in our current hospitals, for as long as we use their current buildings!

My colleague Jackson Carlaw MSP has already exposed the ludicrous false economy of the NHS in Scotland, paying compensation to the relatives of those who die from hospital acquired infections instead of spending the money in the first place keeping wards spotlessly clean. He is quite right to hold the Scottish Executive to account for their failure to tackle the pandemic of hospital acquired infections the NHS seems to be happy to live with!

So today it appears the choice on the Southside of Glasgow is old buildings that kill or new buildings without essential services, which will also cost lives. For me, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde must spend money now properly cleaning our old buildings while continuing to build new buildings into which we can incorporate A&E. After all, at the end of the day the most important thing we can do for our superb doctors and nurses is to give them an environment we can be proud to ask them to work in!

You can read related articles at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article4187889.ece
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/latestnews/C-diff-warning-issued-months.4210639.jp