The allocation of an additional £9 million by the Health Minister Michael McGimpsey to combat the superbug C-difficile last January would appear to have worked much too slowly on our health trusts given that arrangements for a ‘knock-out’ plan to tackle this killer is only now being mentioned after a further 58 cases has been reported in July and 8 have died in the Northern Board alone.

At this stage to be talking about isolation wards, enhanced cleaning programmes and stricter adherence to visitor rules is surely a bit late in the day given that that hundreds of older people have already lost their lives and their deaths are in one way or another associated with C-difficile.

All this points to the absolute need for the appointment of a Commissioner for Older People now and not in two years time as announced some time ago by Dr Paisley and Martin McGuinness, the then First and Deputy First Ministers.

Had this killer bug been taking the lives of younger people in society I imagine there would have been a much speedier programme in place to deal with it.

Indeed - and not wishing to be cynical in any way - I suspect that if this had been foot-and-mouth or the threat of it among animals a state of emergency would have been declared.

Serious questions need to be asked as to how this dreadful situation has been handled across the North and the public need to accept that they too have a serious role to play in how they behave when visiting loved ones in hospital. How many wash their hands with the disinfectant soap provided at many points in hospitals? How many are still going round wards shaking hands with patients who may well already have the bug? How many are still sitting on beds and thereby raising the risk of spreading C-difficile? What are the hospitals doing to enforce common-sense rules?

Much more needs to be done to protect the human rights of our older people and the failure to address C-difficile is symptomatic of a greater problem which, as I have said, can only begin to be addressed when we have a fully independent Commissioner for Older People with the resources to enforce equality for all age groups in every aspect of life including health.

John Dallat

SDLP Assembly Member for East Derry