Hospital trust's response to first meningitis case 'not good enough', says Wes Streeting

Evening Standard

Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said the response from the The Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital in Margate to the meningitis outbreak in Kent was 'not acceptable, and it is not good'.  The hospital notified the UKHSA of the first case within 26 hours, when they were supposed to do so within 24 hours.Mr Streeting said: “We will obviously look more into what went wrong and why, and I’m expecting an account of that failure, not just to the UK Health Security Agency, but to me as the Health and Social Care Secretary.” He said there has been a “remarkable response” from health and education staff, adding: “So far, the results are encouraging, we’re beginning to see the numbers of known, confirmed, suspected cases fall."

Transcript

00:00That is not acceptable, and it is not good enough.

00:03On Wednesday evening, a patient presented unwell.

00:07By the next Thursday morning, around mid-morning, staff suspected meningitis.

00:13At that point, they had a duty to notify the UK Health Security Agency within 24 hours.

00:21They notified them within 26 hours.

00:24That is not acceptable, and it is not good enough.

00:27I think the reassurance I can offer is that this doesn't appear to have had a material impact on the

00:35steps we took to contain the outbreak.

00:39We will obviously look more into what went wrong, why, and I'm expecting an account of that failure,

00:47not just to the UK Health Security Agency, but to me as the Health and Social Care Secretary.

00:52I would just also reassure people that what we've seen in the last couple of weeks

01:01has also been a remarkable response from the UK Health Security Agency,

01:07from NHS staff, from university, school, and college leaders who have had to contend with this outbreak.

Category

Transcript

Comments

Recommended