- Hospitals have been ordered to improve their
decontamination
and sterilisation procedures to reduce the theoretical risk of patients
catching the fatal human form of BSE.
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- The government yesterday promised £200m would be
spent in England alone on new equipment - and confirmed that surgeons must
use throw-away instruments for all tonsil operations in Britain, a change
that will cost a further £30m a year.
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- The measures, part of an extensive overhaul of hospital
hygiene to fight the spread of variant CJD, compare with the £6bn
cost of programmes to control BSE in cattle and lost exports.
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- Ministers and senior officials hope that the
modernisation
of cleansing will help reduce the costs for far more expensive rekitting
of hospitals with disposable equipment for more complicated and more
expensive
operations than tonsillectomy, which is usually performed on children
with equipment costing just a few hundred pounds. But they concede that
the changes in that operation, expected to be completed this year, could
provide valuable lessons for far wider use of once-only instruments if
that were necessary.
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- Eighty-three people have died from vCJD, with five known
victims still alive, but scientists still have little idea of the eventual
size of the epidemic. The Department of Health is so worried that present
decontamination, sterilisation and even washing arrangements are not up
to scratch that it is conducting a national survey and has appointed a
central management team to ensure improvements are carried out. Every
NHS trust is expected to have an official responsible for changes.
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- Problems with existing sterilisation equipment,
regardless
of the vCJD threat, were highlighted late last year by orthopaedic surgeons
at a Portsmouth hospital who threatened to stop all emergency operations,
saying patients' lives were at risk.
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- The new money for equipment in England will be phased
over two years. The NHS in Scotland set aside £3m for improvements
this year and an audit is under way to see just what changes may be needed
in Wales.
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- Pat Troop, deputy chief medical officer for England,
said: "We still do not know how many people might be incubating vCJD.
There is a theoretical risk that it can be passed through surgical
instruments
from those who have yet to show symptoms of the disease. The highest
standards
of decontamination are the cornerstone of our strategy to reduce
risks."
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