Sicko and Britian's NHS

Michael Moore's Sicko portrays Britian's government run healthcare to be fabulous. However, he conviently leaves out all of Britian's healthcare problems. We've discussed the long lines and the rationing of care. In addition, there is also a decline in the quality of care itself. That means obsolete equipment and a decline in cleanliness. This decline has led to a radical rate of staph infections. Now, one in 10 patients get infected.

NY Times - When James Wollacott badly wrenched his knee while jumping on a trampoline in the back garden of his house, the healthy, athletic 20-year-old imagined a quick operation and a swift recuperation.

Instead, he spent three months in the hospital last year, bedridden and gravely ill, battling high fevers and a merciless staph infection. The infection was M.R.S.A., short for methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, known as the ''superbug,'' and Mr. Wollacott picked it up when doctors inserted in his kneecap four titanium pins. ...


One in 10 patients contracts a staph infection while staying in England's hospitals, which rank among the oldest and most crowded in Western Europe. Because superbugs multiply easily in unhygienic surroundings, dirty hospital wards and unclean hands contribute to their spread from patient to patient....

In Britain, staph infections have taken root for several reasons. A number of hospitals were built decades ago and are not designed to isolate infected patients; few have single and double rooms. Instead, wards of six or eight people are common, and there are frequently not enough wash basins. The government is also under pressure to prune long waiting lists for elective procedures, a factor that has aggravated crowding and increased workloads.

''The average wait can be up to six or seven hours,'' Mrs. Rayner said. ''I'm not letting a man with an open wound sit in a ward with a room full of people, full of I-don't-know-what bugs.''

Mrs. Rayner caught a minor case of M.R.S.A. three years ago, when she was in the hospital for an operation on her knee. She has been in several hospitals for a variety of reasons since then, and says she is appalled by the filth and the hygiene practices. In one case, she watched dirt and dust pile up in the corner of a ward. Nurses and assistants did not always wash their hands. She had to call for a basin when she needed to vomit, and then the nurse ran off and left her alone.

Some hospitals do a better job than others. The problem is rare among England's handful of private hospitals, although those facilities seldom see the most vulnerable patients..."