MRSA campaigner fights on

That's the belief of MRSA campaigner Marion Ham as she continues to fight for justice for victims of healthcare infections.

Her husband David died aged 60 at the Conquest in October 2006 having been admitted for a routine operation.

Since then Marion pressed for MRSA to be admitted as the cause of his death and has pushed the Conquest Hospital to improve its hygiene standards.

She recently travelled up to Westminster Abbey to take part in a memorial service for victims of superbugs in NHS hospitals.

The service was attended by relatives and friends of victims as well as Shadow Health Ministers Andrew Lansley and Norman Lamb, former Conservative Health Minister Edwina Currie and leading microbiologist Professor Hugh Pennington.

However there was no representative from the Labour government and Marion - who has moved from Bexhill to Staplehurst in Kent - has since written to Health Minister Alan Johnson to voice her anger.

She commented: " Their absence was not only an insult to the occasion, given that it was the NHS's 60th Birthday, but a complete slur to each and every victim of MRSA.

"They now, in my opinion, are incapable of understanding the real impact this killing machine has on peoples lives.

"The number of people who are dying from MRSA in any one year exceed that of two train crashes per week - or the number of people who die in any one year from C. Difficile far and away exceeds those killed on British roads.

"Yet this government has made a bigger issue of the potential risk of bird flu, which has killed a minuscule amount of people worldwide. How can the Government, and NHS Trust Executives sleep in their beds at night, knowing how much deceit is being put before the British public?

"Furthermore, the deaths from these killer infections are not only not recorded, but they are not entered on Death Certificates as cause or part cause of a death. How insulting is that to not only the victim but the relatives left behind? The Government is suggesting that these peoples lives stand for nothing.

"It is outrageous.

"My aim now is to get the Government to recognise that the correct recording of Healthcare Infections must be truly recorded, and that the involvement of MRSA in the death of a victim be entered onto a Death Certificate.

"Each and every life, stands for something, and for the causation of death not to be truly recorded, is a total snub on the life of the victim. We all deserve better."