Superbug alert after hospital deaths

London: A coroner has warned of the dangers posed by superbug C-Diff after an outbreak claimed the lives of 15 people in a two-month period.

Incidents of the fatal bacteria have increased sharply and were a contributory factor in all the deaths at four hospitals within a 80km radius in the Midlands.

C-Diff was linked to 12 deaths at the City Hospital and Queens Medical Centre, both in Nottingham, whilst two people who died at the King's Mill Hospital in Mansfield and an elderly woman who died at the Lincoln County Hospital, Kathleen Fletcher, also contracted it.

Fletcher's family on Wednesday accused hospital managers of playing down the seriousness of the bug and doing little to stop its spread.

Dr Nigel Chapman, the Nottinghamshire coroner, said that although the Clostridium difficile bug was not the main cause of the Nottingham deaths, it had been marked on their death certificates as a contributory factor. Three were at the City Hospital whilst nine were at the QMC and all came over a four-week period in November and December.

He said: "It is on the death certificate and it was sufficient in my view to note it. It is not necessarily the main cause of death, but it played a part in some way.

"In the last year I only had one or two deaths reported where C-Diff was mentioned. In the last month, I have dealt with more than 12 cases. If I had to hold inquests into all of these cases I could not deal with it. Imagine if this is a national trend, C-Diff could be becoming a huge problem."