Hygiene - areas of concern

Toilets - 22% Wards - 16% Corridors - 10% Waiting areas - 9%

Hospital-acquired infections are estimated to cost the NHS many millions every year as sickly patients need extra treatment and longer stays.

Each year, thousands of people die following such infections.

One in ten of the former patients surveyed by NOP said they had picked up some kind of infection shortly after leaving hospital - the majority within a week.

Those who had visited hospital more than once in the past year were asked if standards seemed to be improving.

The majority of these - 67% - said this did not appear to be the case, while only 16% felt there had been an improvement, and 17% said they had noticed a drop in cleaning quality.

�30m injection

The main areas of concern picked out by patients were toilets, followed by wards, corridors and waiting areas.

Ministers and NHS managers have failed to get on top of the problem

Paul Burstow MP, Liberal Democrats

Liberal Democrat health spokesman Paul Burstow described the survey results as a "damning indictment" of NHS cleanliness.

He said: "Two years after the National Audit Office found poor hospital hygiene was killing people, ministers and NHS managers have failed to get on top of the problem.

"Hospital hygiene is a matter of life and death.

"It is disturbing that far too many patients feel it is low down the list of priorities."

Professor Hugh Pennington, from the Department of Medical Microbiology at the University of Aberdeen, said that hygiene equipment was better in slaughterhouses and sandwich shops than in many NHS hospitals.

He said: "We haven't yet worked out how to persuade people in hospitals, that is all levels of staff who handle patients, why they should wash their hands after contact.

"If you go into a modern slaughterhouse and a modern food processing business you will find that they have automatic wash basins for their staff in the operating units.

"Hospitals should be awash with things like that."

The government insists that it is making headway in improving hospital hygiene.

It launched a �30m clean-up programme in July 2000, with health minister Lord Hunt saying: "Patients have a right to receive treatment, and recover in clean and comfortable surroundings."

Much progress has been made in raising standards

Department of Health spokesman

Their inspections revealed that 42 hospitals had failed hygiene inspections - but in October last year, they announced that all of these had improved sufficiently to be described as "acceptable."

Secretary of State for Health Alan Milburn claimed this as evidence that the campaign was succeeding.

A spokesman for the department said: "The NHS Plan recognised that the cleanliness of hospitals is an important issue for the public and patients and since the plan was published much progress has been made in raising standards backed by the provision of an additional �60 million.

"However we recognise that there is still room for further improvement and to help in achieving this all hospitals must now comply with the new National Standards of Cleanliness for the NHS, published in April 2001."

The survey was funded by Antec International, a biosecurity firm.