Telegraph
This is an extract from a searing item in the Telegraph – click the link for the whole essay
Let us hope that, in the course of the coming ructions, no one sustains such injuries that they might require a stay in hospital. Because if they do, they run an ever higher risk of picking up a fatal infection – an iatrogenic infection – that has nothing to do with the complaint for which they were originally admitted.
The Prime Minister may think it pricelessly funny that he couldn’t remember that he had just been asked what he was doing about MRSA. But I can tell you something, Blair old pal, there are millions of people out there – make that tens of millions – who think the state of our hospitals far more important to their lives than foxhunting.
When Dr Alan Smith walked into my constituency surgery not so long ago, he slightly took me aback by asking whether I wanted to shake his hand.
Why shouldn’t I shake your hand? I asked him, reflexively shaking it. Well, he said, because he had MRSA, and, although it was not infectious, it was contagious, and once you had it you could not be rid of it.
