The HSE, the Health Service Executive, is to seek to reduce the incidence of MRSA in hospitals by 30 per cent over the next five years.
It is also aiming to reduce the rate of healthcare-acquired infections in general by 20 per cent over the same period.
The chief executive of the HSE, Prof Brendan Drumm, said yesterday that a taskforce drawn from staff across the health service is to be established in the coming weeks to spearhead a new campaign aimed at tackling MRSA and healthcare-acquired infections.
The plan will see new performance targets in relation to the rates of MRSA and other healthcare-acquired infections introduced for each hospital.
Prof Drumm told the Dáil Public Accounts Committee that the high prevalence of MRSA in Ireland could only be brought down by controlling the use of antibiotics in the future. Under the plan, the use of antibiotics in hospitals is to be audited.
There is also to be an education initiative for GPs in relation to prescribing antibiotics.
A two-year national campaign is to be aimed at informing the public about MRSA and other hospital-acquired infections as well as providing information on antibiotic use in general.
The model for the new drive against healthcare-acquired infections will be the recent HSE "winter initiative" campaign, which brought together staff from various parts of the organisation with the single goal of reducing overcrowding in hospital A&Es.
Prof Drumm said that there was a lower rate of MRSA in Ireland than in Britain, but the incidence was "still far too high". The rate here was much higher than in some northern European countries in which there was a lower use of antibiotics.
Prof Drumm said that controlling MRSA was a challenge for the system here, as it would be also in other countries. He maintained that the problem was not going to be resolved overnight. "We are never going to reach a situation where there is not a risk attached to going into hospital."
However, he said that the HSE was seeking to minimise the risk.
Committee chairman Michael Noonan said that the public traditionally viewed hospitals as a place of wellbeing, but people were now fearful of going there because they were afraid of contracting MRSA.
Some patients had been told that they were being discharged after a few days in case they acquired MRSA in the hospital.
Mr Noonan also suggested that there was recent evidence that strains of MRSA and other such infections were becoming increasingly immune to the drugs used to combat them. Prof Drumm said that the resistance of some forms of infections to existing drugs was continuing to evolve.
