Britain cuts C. diff cases more than one-third

Over the past year, the British National Health Service has pulled off a feat that, so far, has eluded U.S. healthcare officials: cutting the number of Clostridium difficile cases detected in its system by more than one-third over the past year. The NHS reported 10,866 cases in its hospitals between April and June 2008, down 35 percent over the same period in 2007. This follows an announcement last moth that the NHS was able to cut MRSA rates in half over the past four years. The decline appears to be the results largely of industry-standard practices, such as frequent hand-washing and careful use of antibiotics.

This result stands in sharp contract to trends in the U.S., where C. diff rates are rising rapidly. According to recent CDC figures, there are currently 500,000 cases of C. diff infection each year in the U.S., up from 150,000 in 2001, which contribute to between 15,000 and 30,000 deaths per year.

While observers applauded the British government's success, there remain some critics, with one watchdog group arguing that there's still too much regional variation in C. diff rates, and that the level of infection is still rising in about one-third of the system's units. Still, it appears that the Brits are on target to meet their C. diff goal, which was that the number of cases should be 30 percent less than the 2007/08 average.

To learn more about the NHS's success with C. diff:
- read this piece from The Daily Mail

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