The meeting was held to restore confidence in Maidstone Hospital

Mid Kent and Faversham Tory MP Hugh Robertson called for Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS trust to be dissolved at a rally on Tuesday night.

About 500 people attended the meeting to discuss cleanliness as well as proposed changes to hospital services.

But trust chief executive Glenn Douglas said the health body had a future.

Mr Robertson said: "I think the original board should go completely.

"We intend to build the organisation up to one that is confident and [has a] positive future Glenn Douglas, health trust chief executive

"If anything positive is to come out of this awful chapter it must be a real commitment, firstly, to stamp out C.diff, but secondly to put patients right back at the heart of the NHS.

"No reorganisation or government targets or anything else should be put between the care and the patients."

Senior medical staff passed a number of resolutions at the meeting aimed at restoring public confidence in Maidstone Hospital.

They want to see maternity and accident and emergency provision retained in Maidstone.

A&E consultant Akbar Soorma said: "Maidstone...sees 60,000 patients.

"As I've said before 60 lives a year could be at risk should this plan [to downgrade services] go ahead."

Mr Douglas, who also runs Ashford and St Peter's Hospitals NHS Trust in Surrey, said work to restore confidence was under way.

Staff disciplined

"Together with the new interim chairman, George Jenkins, we intend to build the organisation up to one that is confident and [has a] positive future," he said.

On Monday, the trust revealed two healthcare assistants, who had worked at Maidstone Hospital, had lost their posts, following an investigation in to care standards.

As a result, two more people, a staff nurse and another healthcare assistant at the Kent and Sussex Hospital in Tunbridge Wells, were disciplined.

The sanctions came in the fall-out of a damning Healthcare Commission report into two outbreaks of the deadly superbug at the trust's three hospitals.

At least 90 patients died between 2004 and 2006, caused by a "litany" of errors in infection control, the report said.