Environmental factors, such as dirty hospitals, are responsible for only 10% of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections, Mark Enright, senior research fellow in microbiology at Bath University told a conference organised by the Patients Association in London last week. “If you make nurses wash their hands [between seeing each patient] you can control 80% of it,” he said, explaining that one of the highest risks was in catheterisation.

Dr Enright said that the current rates of MRSA were due to the emergence in the early 1990s ofthe two particular strains of the bacterium which had proved resistant to treatment with the antibiotic methicillin and were particularly virulent. In the …