HEALTH bosses have acted quickly to tackle an outbreak of the clostridium difficile superbug, which killed an elderly patient at Winchester hospital earlier this month.

The 78-year-old woman, who lived in a Winchester nursing home, already had the bug when she was admitted to accident and emergency, a trust spokeswoman said this week.

C-diff has been a contributory factor in the deaths of five patients at the Royal Hampshire County Hospital since April 2007.

The bug is the major cause of antibiotic associated diarrhoea and an intestinal infection that mostly affects elderly patients who have other underlying diseases.

The Winchester and Eastleigh Healthcare NHS Trust has a maximum target of 150 C-diff for the year ending this month - about 12 a month, In a report to the trust board meeting last week nursing and patient care director Juliet Beal said that at the end of January the hospital had 22 cases.

Following five cases on 8 February and two more on 9 February, it was clear that the trust had an outbreak.

An action plan was implemented and Mrs Beal said the outbreak was starting to resolve but was not completely over.

As a result of the outbreak, however, the trust has breached its yearly target, having had 158 cases.

Mrs Beal has made a number of recommendations including reporting cases to the infection control daily and ensuring the trust has a purpose-built isolation ward.

Board members were told that C-diff could be carried in the gut of healthy adults without producing any ill effects. When patients are given broad antibiotics their healthy bacteria' are killed off, leaving the gut vulnerable to infection.

The trust now uses targeted drugs, particularly for the over-65s, rather than those that kill off all bacteria.