Chief nurse Jane Hentley told East Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust board members that hand hygiene was a cause for concern, with five per cent of clinical staff failing to meet standards in October.

The trust will meet its target of 18 MRSA cases for the first six months of 2008/09 only if there are no infections found in December, a board meeting on Wednesday heard.

In the first quarter of the year, the trust, which runs the DGH and the Conquest in Hastings, fell short of its limit of six cases, with five, but it failed to do so from July to September, with eight diagnoses of MRSA.

This meant it could only afford five cases from October to the end of December, five which at the time of going to press it already had recorded.

MRSA bacteria cause a difficult-to-treat infection which resists antibiotics such as penicillin and can be picked up in hospital or in the wider community.

In October there were three cases at the hospital trust, two found on admission to hospital and one thought to have been present when the patient was admitted.

The NHS trust is within its limits for Clostridium difficile associated disease, caused by bacteria in the gut.

Ms Hentley said some isolated staff were bringing down the percentage of staff tested who had good hand hygiene and a review would be launched into medical areas where staff did not comply with hygiene rules.