An audit of cleanliness in the State's hospitals will outline today in stark terms a shocking standard of hygiene in many hospitals.
The hospitals have been inspected by UK company Desford Consultancy, which marked each hospital on levels of hygiene in A&E and other departments, as well as levels of hand hygiene among hospital staff. A Health Service Executive source confirmed last evening that the findings "weren't good".
The source said a majority of hospitals did not comply with required standards. "There is a lot of room for improvement."
The report will name each hospital inspected and how it fared. Hospitals mentioned will be given details of how they were graded shortly before the report is published this afternoon. However, earlier suggestions that the report would detail the number of MRSA infections detected in each hospital have been discounted.
The hygiene audit, which was commissioned by the HSE, was announced by the Minister for Health after she came under sustained pressure from action groups such as the MRSA and Families group and the Patients Together group to do something about the level of cleanliness in hospitals. The groups claimed poor hygiene standards in hospitals put patients at risk of picking up infections.
At least €68 million was spent on cleaning the majority of the State's public hospitals last year but Janette Byrne of Patients Together said a basic commodity such as soap is still not being provided in the toilets of all hospitals.
Ms Harney said earlier this year she has visited meat factories where standards of hygiene were higher than they were in some hospitals.