HAMPSHIRE Primary care Trust (PCT) has introduced a bug-busting team to do battle with bugs and infection across the county.

The new infection prevention and control team is being led by Theresa Lewis, the new lead nurse.

She is joined by Angela Roberts, Jacky Hunt and Mary Pilgrim who will be working as infection prevention and control nurses throughout the county.

They will be working closely with community staff and local acute trusts, and will be providing advice, education and training to help make sure patients are cared for in a safe environment, where the risks of infection are kept as low as possible.

The team's first priority will be to build-up the existing network of infection control link advisors (ICLA) across the county, to make sure all locations have a named contact in infection prevention and control.

With support from their infection prevention nurse, the ICLA will provide training in hand hygiene to all new staff joining the PCT and to existing staff on an annual basis. Theresa said: "This is a really exciting opportunity to get a brand new infection prevention team up and running.

"Everybody in the team mostly has large hospital backgrounds, so moving out into the community is a big challenge to us, as we are used to having our wards close-by. "At the moment we are busy meeting and greeting all of the staff working in the areas covered by the PCT, and getting to grips with the main priorities.

"One of the main challenges we face is to make sure all staff receive training in infection control each year.

"This is particularly challenging because Hampshire is the largest PCT in the country, and geographically, our staff are very spread out."