SUPERHOSPITAL

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Visiting hours have been reduced at Derbyshire Royal Infirmary and Derby City General Hospital to try to prevent the spread of a potentially-fatal superbug. An outbreak of Clostridium Difficile has hit the city's hospitals which have seen cases more than double over the last year. CD can cause severe diarrhoea and can severely affect the elderly. Visitors are also being asked not to sit on patient's beds and to wash their hands on entering and leaving wards.

Em Wilkinson-Brice, deputy director of nursing for Derby Hospitals' NHS Trust, said the rest of the country was also experiencing higher levels of the superbug than expected. She said, "We'd expect to see an upward trend of the number of cases in winter, but we'd not normally expect to see this happen until November. We're now trying to contain the infection we have got in order to prevent it from spreading further."

According to the trust, 25% of the patients who have CD came into hospital with the highly-virulent bug. The trust has limited visiting hours from 2pm until 4pm and between 6pm and 8pm on all wards except maternity and children's wards. Visiting hours were 1.30pm to 5.20pm and 7pm to 8.15pm. The trust's infection control team is also asking visitors not to visit the hospital if they are feeling unwell. (Source: Derby Evening Telegraph, Sep/06)

When the plans for a "super hospital" on the Derby City General Hospital site were first mooted, it brought a stream of objections from city and county residents, many on the grounds of difficulty of access compared to the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary site. We were reassured that adequate public transport would be arranged. Eventually, a new "health hopper" service, the No 31, was introduced to meet this requirement. After some adjustment, this settled down to a route as follows: City Hospital, city centre, Morledge, railway station, DRI, Cavendish, Littleover Lane, City Hospital.

Service 31A ran in the reverse direction. The service is half-hourly for eight or nine hours in the day. The buses were easy-access low vehicles, suitable for wheelchair users, people with walking aids, prams or pushchairs. Journey times? DRI to City Hospital was about 15 minutes, from Cavendish 10 minutes, Littleover Lane six minutes. This saved passengers a journey into the city and change of bus. It was subsidised by the NHS but now I understand that Arriva wants a much greater subsidy, which the NHS is not willing to pay, so the service is to be axed in mid-April!

This will leave many people having to travel into the city to change buses. There will be higher fares to pay, or an expensive taxi ride. Perhaps, most amazingly, the buses now have a notice telling us that a new hospital bus service will run hourly - DRI, city centre, DRI, City Hospital, DRI and only calling at the points mentioned. A further "staff only" bus will run between the DRI and the City Hospital - subsidised of course! As far as services from the city centre are concerned, the excellent Trent Barton Mickleover service, plus V1 and V2 Trent Barton services to Burton, provide a good alternative to the City Hospital.

People from the Normanton, Cavendish, Littleover Lane areas that will be the losers. A sensible service would be as 31 and 31A services run now but starting and terminating in the Morledge. One bus could run a round trip in each direction and an hourly service. Two buses could run a half-hourly service. Will anyone take any notice of this letter? I doubt it - these proposed services appear to have been signed and settled. K. J. Barlow

As a frequent user of the 31 service, the hospitals and the railway station, and as a resident in an area that will no longer be served by the replacement, I will have to use four buses to access these. To the farcical comment on the leaflets that they hope we will be able to find alternative public transport, my question is: what viable alternative public transport? There will be no alternative but to travel into the city centre and out again (four buses and two fares), or have a taxi at a cost of some £12 for both ways. As I am on low income, I can claim the cost of travelling expenses to and from hospital appointments. It is something I have never done before but will be doing in future. I urge everyone else in my situation to do the same.

Also, as I am diabetic, if I need treatment requiring an overnight fast, I am given the first appointment, usually 9am. At present, if the appointment is at the DRI, I can catch the first bus, thus avoiding a taxi fare. Also, what about access to the railway station and the city centre? This change will give us no direct public transport to the station and halve our services to the city centre. What is Arriva doing about this? Taxi firms will be laughing all the way to the bank. The people responsible for the changes claim that they consulted patients, visitors and staff. Were all these people car-users and when did the "consultations" take place? They did not ask me or anyone else that I have spoken to. In fact, many people did not know the service was being cancelled. Janice Anne Lee

Derby's ambulance stations at Raynesway, Willow Row and Mickleover, which have a total of 20 ambulances and 128 staff, are expected to be amalgamated on a new site, although the possibility of one of the stations being expanded has not been ruled out. If "super-stations" were built in Derby, it could mean that some of the county's smaller, rural stations could close, although the East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) said that it was too early to say if this would happen. Better staff training facilities are also expected at the larger stations. EMAS says that it would finance the stations itself or they could be built under Private Finance Initiatives. Pete Ripley, EMAS assistant director of operations, said that its existing sites in Derby were probably too small to house a "super-station". (Source: Derby Evening Telegraph)