Management at University College Hospital Galway (UCHG) and Merlin Park Regional Hospital in Galway knew for years patients were at risk of contracting MRSA, yet failed to contain the spread of the infection, it has emerged.
Records of meetings of the infection control committee for both hospitals show that in May 2001, the committee expressed its "dismay and anger" over the non-implementation of policies to stop the spread of the antibiotic-resistant superbug.
The committee's preferred options were to have dedicated wards for infected patients and, failing that, to have single-room isolation. However, the correspondence cites lack of funding and staff shortages as reasons why that policy was not followed.
MRSA - Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus - can be fatal if it enters the bloodstream through open wounds. A number of inquests across the State recently returned verdicts of death as a result of MRSA infection.
Letters have also come into the public domain that show doctors wrote to hospital management outlining their serious concerns about the spread of MRSA.
One letter, dated April 2003 from Dr Martin Cormican of the department of medical microbiology at UCHG, sets out his concerns to hospital management that six patients had MRSA in St Anthony's ward and were placed side by side with patients who did not have the bug.
The official policy for both hospitals is to isolate patients with MRSA either in single-bedded wards or in one dedicated ward. However, medics in other letters highlighted incidents where MRSA patients were left all night on trolleys in A&E; where MRSA patients were placed in surgical wards, putting other patients with fresh wounds at risk; and where scrub areas were shared by surgeons operating on both infected and non-infected patients.
Consultant urologist Dr Hugh Bredin, now retired from public medicine, wrote of his concerns to the then western health board seven years ago. He wrote of his "unhappiness" regarding the control of MRSA infection at UCHG: "I believe now that large-scale management of patients with MRSA in a routine hospital ward with sharing of facilities such as bathrooms, wash-hand basins and toilets and sharing of doctors, nurses, cleaning staff, etc is not an adequate arrangement to prevent the spread of infection."
A spokeswoman for the Health Service Executive declined to comment on the letters but said UCHG was committed to tackling the problem of MRSA.
Margaret Dawson of the MRSA and Families Network said the letters confirmed what victims of MRSA had been saying - that people knew MRSA was a problem for years but it was kept hidden.
