PM announces hospital 'deep clean'
The prime minister said day-to-day cleaning was insufficent to rid hospitals of hygiene problems
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Sunday, 23, Sep 2007 10:39
Prime minister Gordon Brown has ordered a deep clean of hospitals to return them to the state of cleanliness they were in at the time of their opening.
In an article in the News of the World, Mr Brown said day-to-day cleaning was insufficient to solve all health problems.
He wrote: "We know that over time, ingrained cleanliness problems build up, especially in hard-to-reach places like ceilings and ventilation ducts, which cannot be dealt with by day-to-day cleaning.
"So over the next year, for the first time, every hospital will receive a deep clean designed to return our hospitals to the state they were in when they were built brand new," he added.
The prime minister, who is currently in Bournemouth for his first party conference as Labour leader, told the Sunday Times that the quality of healthcare provided was an issue his government would focus on.
"The important thing about the health service is people rightly want a higher standard of service. And if the issues in 1997 were rightly about how the quantity of people on waiting lists had to come down, the issues in the next few years as I've learned going round the country…are about the quality of care.
"And people want a personal service, they want personal care, needs taken seriously… And they want to meet the doctor and consultant that they choose, and they want to do things with a quality that is far higher than has been before.
"And that's why we want to bring about greater opportunities for visits to the GP, that's why we want to have cleaner and safer hospital wards, and that's why we have to have more regular offers for screening, so that people can prevent illness as well as deal with their illness."
The prime minister refused to comment on whether he would hold early polls to capitalise on his lead in the opinion polls. He told the Sunday Times that he would prefer to focus on matters on hand rather than comment on an election date.