To ask the Scottish Executive how many recorded cases of Clostridium difficile there were in each of the last eight quarters, broken down by hospital.

National surveillance of Clostridium difficile is carried out at board level although hospitals undertake local surveillance. However, in future there will be a common reporting template used by all boards to capture HAI data at hospital/service level on a number of metrics, for example MRSA, C.diff, Hand Hygiene, cleaning standards and causes of adverse incidents. Prior to October 2006 cases were reported on a voluntary basis and the systems for doing so were unreliable. Therefore only the past seven quarters of data are available. It should also be noted that the first quarter (October 2006 to December 2006) of data collection was artificially low, due to a lack of full compliance with the surveillance protocol by some hospitals.

Table showing C.diff cases for the past seven quarters, broken down by health board:

Source: Health Protection Scotland: www.hps.scot.nhs.uk.