Hospitals are focusing too much on cleanliness and may be missing other key factors in the battle against MRSA, according to a city public health expert.
Peter Hawkey, Professor of Public Health Bacteriology at the West Midlands Public Health Laboratory, claims cleaner wards "won't solve the problem on its own".
He expressed his concern that more needs to be done to kill bacteria and stop infections from spreading.
" Antibiotics play an extremely important role in minimising resistance by killing infecting bacteria and preventing the spread to other patients," said Professor Hawkey.
" Overuse of certain classes of antibiotics has contributed to the development of resistance and this situation is exacerbated by the fact there are very few new antibiotics in development, limiting the available options.
"New treatments are urgently needed to treat gram positive bacteria including multi- drug resistant bugs such as MRSA as well as gramnegative bacteria - which is the fastest growing problem in the UK," he added.
More than 60 per cent of hospital-acquired infections ( HAIs) are now caused by resistant bacteria.
Cases of methicillin - resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) have risen dramatically, and at nearly 44 per cent, the United Kingdom has one of the highest infection rates in Europe.
As antibiotics become less effective against these bacteria, this has lead potentially life-threatening HAIs to rise to more than 100,000 cases and about 5,000 deaths a year in Britain.
