SWINDON and Marlborough NHS Trust says it is on target to reduce the number of MRSA superbug cases in Swindon's flagship hospital after half-yearly figures were released by the Department of Health.

As reported in yesterday's late edition of the Adver, there were 13 infections at Swindon and Marlborough NHS Trust which includes the Great Western Hospital between April and September last year.

The trust reported 23 cases of the killer bug for the year April 2004 to March 2005.

But Ruth Lockwood, the trust's director of infection control, is confident the number of cases will be below that figure by the end of the current year.

"From our point of view, we are not satisfied," said Mrs Lockwood. "We are always striving to reduce the number of cases of MRSA and, ideally, we want to get down to no cases.

"Overall, we are seeing a downward trend, but we are not complacent. We had 23 reported cases last year and, of those, 14 were hospital-acquired.

"The first half of this year we had 13 cases reported and I think seven of those were hospital-acquired, so we are still on target and we are still aiming to get fewer than 23 this year.

"We do feel we are doing as much as we can and we are working especially hard with the community to reduce that number even further.

"We have appointed a community infection control nurse and our aim is to reduce the turn-around time with the lab to 24 hours from three days so we can identify any infections quicker."

The trust also plans to screen high-risk patients for MRSA when they come into hospital for surgery.

The Department of Health figures revealed that the Great Western Hospital is bucking the national trend.

Nationally, infections caused by MRSA methicillil-resistant Staphylococcus aureus fell to 3,580 between April and September last year, compared to 3,689 between October 2004 and March 2005.

Yesterday, health minister Jane Kennedy warned that health chiefs who failed to get to grips with the problem would be targeted by hit squads, who would try and get to the root of the problem.

The number of MRSA cases still remains higher at neighbouring hospital trusts than in Swindon.