Huge response to cleanliness story (From Warrington Guardian)

Huge response to cleanliness story

PUBLIC response to last week's Warrington Guardian exclusive story about appalling standards of hygiene on a Warrington hospital ward has been colossal.

Warrington Guardian readers have flooded the office with an unprecedented number of e-mails, phone calls and letters supporting the claims of patient Mike Mahoney who took pictures of blood, excrement and dirty dressings with his mobile phone camera during a five day stay on ward A8.

The story has provoked outrage in the town and scores of people contacted the Warrington Guardian with their own stories of poor hygiene and sanitation on various wards at the hospital.

To read a selection of the letters we have received see Points of View on pages 19, 20 and 21.

Mr Mahoney contacted the Guardian last week when he was discharged from hospital to expose the state of the ward.

He claims that dried blood on his bedside table remained there for the duration of his stay despite asking a nurse for it to be cleaned.

He took photographs of the blood and also snapped a bloody dressing left in the men's toilets', excrement smeared on the toilet wall and a full urine sample bottle with dirty dressing left on a hand towel dispenser in the toilets.

Warrington Hospital has agreed to look into Mr Mahoney's complaint and says that signs will now be displayed asking patients to inform staff of anything they find unacceptable.

But it seems that Mr Mahoney's experience on ward A8 is not an isolated case judging from the feedback the story has provoked.

One reader writes: "What I have just read on your front page is bad enough, but my son was admitted on Monday just gone and when he arrived there he had to wait for bedding and a pillow for his bed. To top it all the bed had blood stains on it, my wife had to clean this off herself."

sharker@guardiangrp.co.uk