Campaigner continues her fight for clean hospitals
Andrea Jenkyns with Phillip Hollobone MP and Health Minister Daniel Poulter at a YouGov health conference.
A campaigning councillor is taking her fight to improve hospital safety with steps such as inspections made by patients to government.
Boston North West countycouncillor Andrea Jenkyns has worked with the MRSA Action UK as its East Midlands Voluntary Rep since her dad died 16 months ago.
She said he went from a vibrant man who kept fit by boxing to weighing less than seven stone through contacting MRSA in just four months.
She said: “After dad passed, I just thought I don’t want anyone else going through what we went through.”
She is now lobbying government and hospitals for a number of measures and was due to meet Baroness Thornton at Parliament yesterday.
Firstly, she wants to improve transparency by registering statistics differently. Currently she says hospitals do not have to record MRSA when it isn’t in the blood stream before an operation.
She also said that by having doctors and nurses lead the way in cleanliness this will inspire others.
She also wants, with patients permission, to list off those who died from MRSA and similar illnesses in staff newsletters in a shock tactic similar to the way messages are printed on cigarette packets.
Another idea is to have inspections where groups of non-healthcare professionals look at hospitals’ cleanliness.
She said: “This is such a big issue, we all know somebody who has been in hospital.
“I’m not saying every hospital does or doesn’t get things right, but it’s a basic concern, we need to get it right.”
Andrea’s story about her dad recently went national when she appeared on Sky News last week.
It followed news that chief medical officer Professor Dame Sally Davies is calling for human antibiotics resistance to be put on the national risk register alongside terrorism and severe weather.
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Weather for Boston, Lincolnshire
Sunday 19 May 2013
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