A major deep clean has begun at Airedale General Hospital as part of a nationwide programme aimed at wiping out killer bugs such as MRSA.

The ten-week programme of intensive cleaning, which will see every ward and patient bay in the hospital deep cleaned by expert company Operon, will take until the end of March to complete.

It is part of a £57.5 million programme to clean every hospital in the country, which was announced by Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the Labour Party conference last September.

Hospitals in the Yorkshire and Humber region have been allocated a total of £5 million for cleaning.

Trusts have a deadline of the end of March to complete the ward-by-ward deep clean in an attempt to eradicate infections such as MRSA and C-difficile.

The deep clean involves emptying wards to allow staff to carry out a more comprehensive clean than would be done by the day-to-day teams, such as cleaning behind radiators and light fittings, wall washing and dismantling and cleaning of beds.

They will use steam-cleaning methods and sporicidal agents which kill spores and bacteria.

The deep clean at Airedale is just one part of a raft of infection control measures announced in August last year by chief executive Adam Cairns.

The Trust has also invested in the latest technology - microfibre - used by its award winning in-house cleaning team and patient equipment such as hi-tech catheters to cut rates of hospital-acquired infections.

It is also taking part in a Safer Patient Initiative in partnership with Bradford Teaching Hospitals which will see the trusts testing out ways of making patient care safer. Staff will be looking at ways to improve infection control, the management of drugs and communication between staff teams and patients.

Bridget Fletcher, director of nursing at Airedale NHS Trust said: "Cleanliness is very important to our patients and we are absolutely committed to reducing infection rates and making our hospital a safe, clean place to be cared for.

"Tackling infection and hygiene is a major focus this year and so is an absolute priority for all our staff. We are already seeing infection rates in our patients fall and this is clear evidence of this hard work creating positive results.

"We welcome this deep clean initiative, it is something we had already been trialing and have plans to continue with to ensure our hospital meets the highest standards of cleanliness."

Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Bradford Royal Infirmary and St Luke's Hospital, introduced a deep clean team more than 12 months ago, with a scheduled programme of deep cleans across all clinical areas.

The deep clean team has worked with matrons and the infection control team and, since its introduction, a number of NHS trusts have consulted with Bradford and visited the Foundation Trust to share its expertise on the establishment and operation of deep clean teams.

The foundation trust is also working in partnership with Bradford and Airedale Teaching Primary Care Trust on issues of deep cleaning and infection control and the tPCT has provided funding of £1.7m for these measures.

Miles Scott, chief executive of Bradford Teaching Hospitals said: "We are very proud of the deep clean teams in the Foundation Trust and their achievements over the last 12 months."

Airedale NHS Trust is on target to achieve no more than 12 cases of MRSA infections during the year 2007/08 with three cases in July, one in August and no cases in September or October.

Bradford Teaching Hospitals has already failed its challenging target of 18 MRSA infections for the year. To date there have already been 37 cases confirmed.

There has been a reduction in the number of reported incidents of C.difficile and health bosses are forecasting a reduction in incidents across the district in 2007/08 compared with 2006/07.

e-mail: claire.lomax @bradford.newsquest.co.uk