CASES of the hospital-acquired infection (HAI) Clostridium difficile have fallen sharply in recent years.
There were 1382 reported cases of life-threatening C.diff last year - around one fifth of the 6430 cases reported in 2007, Health Secretary Alex Neil said.
Government figures show there were 608 cases reported in the first six months of the year - less than half the total reported cases for 2012, Mr Neil revealed in response to a parliamentary question.
The SNP's Bob Doris, deputy convener of Holyrood's Health Committee, said the reduction demonstrates "the dramatic impact the SNP's focus on tackling hospital-acquired infection has had".
He added: "Last year, there were over 5000 fewer people aged 65 or over reported to have C.diff since the SNP came to power.
"That is a fantastic achievement under the SNP and could not have been achieved without the hard work and dedication of our health service.
"There have been falls across every NHS board in Scotland."
He added: "Investment in tackling HAIs, bringing cleaning back into the public sector and establishing the Healthcare Environment Inspectorate are all key steps taken by the SNP to cut C.diff rates across Scotland."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article