IRELAND is one of the only countries in Europe not to have a national surveillance unit to monitor the super-bug, MRSA, which is affecting patients in hospitals.
This is despite a recommendation for such a unit made more than a year ago by a special committee set up to identify the extent of MRSA in the health system.
There are up to 20 patients, together with a number of staff, suffering from the effects of MRSA in most large Irish hospitals at any one time, according to the report.
In one Dublin private hospital elective admissions had to be cancelled when 23 patients and 20 staff were found to be infected.
The issue was raised at a meeting of the Southern Health Board yesterday by Deputy Batt O'Keeffe who said there were almost certainly people dying from MRSA, which affects the blood, joints and heart valves.
"But we have no way of knowing the numbers who get the ailment or the number of people who die from it because the unit has not been established," he said.
The disease was very expensive to treat as patients had to be isolated and the drugs used for treatment were expensive.
Mr O'Keeffe accused the health services of trying to keep the problem quiet because of the cost of closing parts of hospitals when the infection rate became very high.
"MRSA, according to the data gathered by the committee, although incomplete, is an important problem in acute hospital services and is an impediment to the delivery of an effective and efficient service. It is ridiculous that a recommendation emanating from a Department of Health Committee over 12 months ago that a surveillance unit would be put in place has fallen on deaf ears," said Mr O'Keeffe.
Clinical microbiologists say MRSA is now a fact of life but with infection control officers in hospitals the problem could be monitored properly. "It is a very worrying problem and people are dying of this but the full extent will not be known until a national unit has been put in place," Mr O'Keeffe added.