18pc of intensive care patients suffer.

Latest figures concerning MRSA show it has spread so widely that 18pc of patients in North-East intensive care wards contract the bug.

One in 10 patients has a hospital infection at any one time and more than 300,000 patients a year acquire one or more infections while in hospital, costing the NHS pounds 1 billion a year.

In 2001 2,678 cases of the killer germ Staphylococcus were reported in North hospitals to the Public Health Laboratory Service.

Of these, 698 were of the more dangerous resistant form of Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus.