NINE people have died unnecessarily at the Great Western Hospital (GWH) in the last 16 months.

A Freedom Of Information (FOI) request has revealed that in the months between January 2009 and this May, there were 35 Serious Untoward Incidents (SUIs), an incident that causes or threatens serious harm or death to patients, staff or the public, resulting in the death of nine people.

Nationally, in the same space of time, there were 3,200 mistakes or SUIs resulting in 656 deaths.

A spokesman for the GWH said that the figure must be taken into context with the number of patients treated at the hospital in the same period.

He said: “Patient safety is our number one priority and whilst we are pleased that the figures show that we are amongst the better performing Trusts with lower numbers of SUIs, we are always looking at ways we can reduce the risk to patients from these types of incidents.

“On rare occasions there may be a serious incident, such as a patient contracting clostridium difficile, which can contribute towards their death, something which we work tirelessly to avoid at all times.

“Providing highly complex medical care does mean, unfortunately, that we can never eliminate that risk completely but we can minimise it as much as possible, as we have done over recent years.

“It is credit to the work of the staff across the Trust that we have seen a big fall in the number of incidents of MRSA and clostridium difficile (all of which have to be reported as an SUI and therefore contribute towards the figures) by 80 per cent in five years and in 2009/10 not one person died as a result of contracting an MRSA Bacteraemia at GWH – something we are working hard to continue this year.

“We have a strong reporting and learning culture and we routinely report and record any incident which has the potential to cause harm to a patient so that we can look at our processes and reduce the risk of a similar incident happening again.

“Any figures showing the number of Serious Incidents should always be seen in the context of the number of people treated by a hospital.

“Last year we treated over 380,000 patients, the vast majority of whom receive high quality care without incident by professional and committed staff.”

Nationally, in some of the worst cases in the national league table, the wrong organs were removed or patients given the wrong drugs or transfusions of the wrong blood type.

In one case at Luton and Dunstable Hospital a newborn baby was fed fabric conditioner.

In another incident, in Kent’s Dartford and Gravesgam NHS Trust, a feeding tube which should have been connected to a patient’s stomach or intestine, is believed to have been inserted directly into the heart.

Other statistics outlined in the FOI show that 90 patients were given the wrong medication or an overdose, surgeons operated on the wrong part of a patient in 32 cases while instruments were left inside 18 patients.

Patients’ Association director Katherine Murphy said: “More can be done to reduce the amount of patients harmed.

“We will challenge any attempts to make cuts to the number of nurses, doctors and other clinic staff.”