THE Royal Bolton Hospital has been hit by nearly half the number of superbug cases it is allowed for the entire year in just two months.

In April and May, Bolton NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the hospital, had 12 cases of the superbug C Difficile.

The trust is now only allowed to have another 16 cases by April 2014, or it will breach its target for the second consecutive year.

Last year, the trust had 65 cases when it was allowed no more than 28 — a breach which could have cost the hospital £4.5 million in fines.

Bolton Clinical Commissioning Group, who had the right to levy the multi-million pound fine, decided to penalise the trust £3.4 million for missing the targets, but reinvested the money in the hospital to improve infection control.

The CCG also brought in infection expert Martin Kiernan, former president of the Infection Prevention Society, to carry out an independent review.

Mr Kiernan’s report was published last month and recommended nine action points to cut infections.

But just days after the report was published, the trust’s board revealed that they have had five cases of C Difficile in May and had seven in April.

Director of operations Jon Scott told the board that they would not meet that target for C Difficile this year, but said numbers of cases would go down after the action plan was put into place.

“We will have a reduction in cases, but it is unlikely that we will meet the target,” he added.

The hospital’s new director of nursing, Trish Armstrong-Child, said work had already begun on hydrogen peroxide decontamination for wards.

She said work had begun to “take action” on Mr Kiernan’s report.

The report called for the appointment of a deputy director of infection prevention and control, and recommended quarterly antibiotic prescription audits, formal “root cause analysis” meetings for every C Difficile infection, an analysis of the effectiveness of the current infection prevention and control committee, and to set up a health economy infection prevention and control committee.

It also advised the trust to continue working closely with Bolton CCG.