A hospital trust has missed its annual target for superbug control - with four months still remaining.

Forty-five people have had MRSA diagnosed at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton and the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath since April.

Managers were set a target to limit cases to 43 between April this year and the end of March 2008.

But Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust said the figures were still a fraction of what they were in the past financial year.

Managers have announced a package of heavy-duty measures to reduce infection rates further, with the help of Government advice.

The hospitals will be deepcleaned between now and March 31. Every time a patient moves out, a special team of cleaners will be ordered to sterilise every surface of the bed, floor and furniture, including the bed curtain.

In Brighton a ward will be created specifically for the treatment of clostridium difficile, the intestinal infection that particularly affects people who have taken antibiotics.

The trust will give extra training to matrons and will act on recommendations made by the Department of Health.

Janice Kent, vice-chairwoman of the independent patient and public involvement forum for the trust, said: "These are excellent plans.

"This has been a concern of the forum for some time. I am confident it is going to make a big change. There is a lot of money going into it. This is good work by the trust."

At a meeting of the trust's executive board yesterday, chief nurse Alison Robertson said they were working hard to combat the potentially fatal bugs.

She said: "We are not complacent.

There is work in progress to make sure infection control is managed as tightly and robustly as it can be."

In the next fortnight managers plan to introduce scorecards for each ward area so they can be compared on cleanliness.

Mrs Kent said patients should be asked about their experiences and whether beds were thoroughly cleaned.

The deep-cleaning programme, funded by the Strategic health authority, is part of a national response to outbreaks of C difficile in Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells last month.

Duncan Selbie, chief executive of Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, said it made more sense to clean each bed area rather than moving patients to clean one department at a time.

Last year there were 103 cases of MRSA. Mr Selbie said the hospital was likely to finish the financial year with 60 to 65 cases of MRSA, but figures could range between 50 and 80.

He said: "Each of those is substantially better than we were in 2006 to 2007. Infection is one of our top six concerns."

He claimed some people who were admitted to A&E already had the superbug, while the number of cases of C difficile was steadily decreasing.

Mr Selbie said it was difficult to find out whether infections had been acquired in hospital or in other parts of the health service. Department of Health inspectors were invited to visit the Royal Sussex on October 31 and the Princess Royal on November 28.

They recommended four areas for improvement: skin should be cleaned thoroughly before intravenous treatment; high-risk antibiotics should be controlled; bleach should be used to clean risk areas; and the root cause of each infection should be analysed forensically.

The inspectors' full report is expected by the end of next week.

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