Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many hospital-borne infectious diseases were recorded in England in (a) 2000, (b) 2005, (c) 2010 and (d) 2015.

In April 2013, Public Health England took over the mandatory surveillance of healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs), formerly undertaken by the Health Protection Agency.

The total number of trust apportioned cases of HCAIs can be found in Table 1. For the purposes of answering this question trust apportioned cases can be considered “hospital-borne” infections.

Data for the years 2000 and 2005 are not available.

Table: Counts of trust apportioned HCAIs by financial year in 2010 and 2015:

Notes:

1. ND - Not Determined
2. Cases are deemed to be trust apportioned if the following criteria are met:-

- The location where the specimen was taken is given as ‘acute trust’ or is not known;

- The patient was either an ‘In-patient’, ‘Day-patient’, in ‘Emergency assessment’ or is not known.

- Patient’s specimen date is on, or after, the third day of the admission (or admission date is null), where the day of admission is day 1 (for MSSA or E. coli bacteraemia)

Or

- Patient’s specimen date is on, or after, the fourth day of the admission (or admission date is null), where the day of admission is day 1 (for Clostridium difficile infection).