Policing the Bugs

During the 1980s and 1990s, patients contracting infections in hospital, that antibiotics could no longer treat, dominated the headlines.

The strict hygienic regimes, so beloved by matrons since the Nightingale era, had been undermined by a reliance on antibiotics. When one bacterium became resistant to an antibiotic, there was always another to fall back on.

But when patients became infected with a bacterium which had become resistant to Methicillin, a crucial antibiotic in the health service's armoury, the defence against the bugs began to crumble. Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, or MRSA, thrived in NHS hospitals and began to spread, largely unchecked, from patient to patient.

As the numbers of patients contracting MRSA spiralled, the cleanliness of NHS hospitals, and their poor infection control, came under close scrutiny. Clostridium Difficile also emerged, alongside MRSA, as a source of public anxiety.

It was time for the NHS to clean up its act and tackle the spread of antibiotic resistance head-on, with the infection control nurse leading the fight.

Producer: Beth Eastwood.