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 06 July 2008 00:55 BST

Clean hospital focus promised

Friday, 19 Oct 2007 07:19
Health minister Lord Ara Darzi pledges to adopt a "local focus on cleanliness" across the NHS

Health In Focus 

Health minister Lord Ara Darzi has promised to instil a "local focus on cleanliness" across the NHS.

Writing in the Lancet medical journal, Lord Darzi, an eminent surgeon, champions local efforts as the solution to failures in preventing the spread of hospital superbugs.

The Healthcare Commission has delivered several damning indictments of cleanliness within trusts in England and Wales over the last week.

Lord Darzi's comments in the Lancet come after the publication of his Our NHS, our future review, which advocated extended opening hours for GP surgeries.

"By combining a national perspective with local knowledge and experience, the Our NHS, our future review can prove that we are not missing the obvious, and that we recognise good-quality care is absolutely fundamental to the NHS," he writes.

Lord Darzi, handed a ministerial portfolio at the Department of Health by Gordon Brown earlier this year, was asked to undertake the review as part of the government's attempt to create a more "personal" NHS.

He also says that the NHS should become a leader in fairness by correcting imbalances in areas that are the most in need of healthcare provision but have the fewest doctors.

But a related editorial in the Lancet questions whether existing general practice models are still functioning.

"In an era when medicine is becoming ever more specialised (in terms of doctors knowledge and expertise, and the organisation of services), how sustainable is a system of general practice based on minimal training in key specialties, and resulting in uncertain performance?" its author asks.

"For too long, and despite endless attempts at reform, the NHS has been complacent.

"Based on a model of care that is 50 years out of date, it is led by sometimes narrow professional and political interests in the absence of evidence about service design. A 21st century health system needs the most skilled doctors working alongside general practitioners in the community, as well as specialist hospitals. Yet this is the change in the NHS that few dare suggest."End of story


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