HEALTH bosses want to spend £450,000 making Poole Hospital a cleaner place and lowering the rates of killer infections such as MRSA.

Following the concerns raised by health minister John Reid about the cleanliness of the UK's hospitals and its link to infection control, the profile of cleaning is being raised and national cleanliness standards brought in.

While Poole Hospital consistently meets the standards required for clean wards, bosses feel that more funding is needed to maintain and improve the service and to help eliminate the MRSA superbug.

They want to spend £50,000 for 2004-05, £100,000 for 2005-06 and £150,000 for 2006-07 and 2007-08 to make sure alcohol cleaning gel is installed at every bed-head, employ more domestic staff, set up a cleaning team to deal with requests from a hotline and increase pay to all cleaning staff.

In addition, the hospital wants to buy additional equipment to help combat MRSA such as steam cleaners and cleaning machines designed to clean toilets and a new floor cleaning mop system.

Poole Hospital NHS Trust chief executive Lloyd Adams said: "We are actually doing very well in spite of the fact that this is a service that over the years we've taken money out of.

"But we know we have to do better and it's not just us doing our bit. I think we should look to the public to help us a little bit here.

"This will be absolutely key to the reputation and management of the hospital and how the public view the hospital, whether they choose to come here."

At a meeting of the trust's board yesterday the plans were approved in principle, but doubt was expressed over the amount of money available for the changes.

It was agreed that £7,500 be found by the end of 2005 to ensure alcohol cleaning gel dispensers were available at the head of every bed and that funding for cleaning be made a priority when the budget for the next financial year was discussed.

First published: October 2