EVERY single piece of medical equipment in East Lancashire hospitals will be cleaned over the next four months.

The Government has ordered health trusts throughout the UK to carry out massive cleaning operations in a bid to cut the number of hospital-acquired infections like MRSA and C-difficile.

Equipment will be removed including beds, mattresses and lockers to ensure a complete deep clean'.

The cleaning will be so extensive that it will include the removal of and re-hanging of curtains, all fixtures and fittings including hard and soft surfaces and all internal glass.

Areas will be inspected before the clean to check whether maintenance work needs to be carried out first.

East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust chief executive Jo Cubbon told members of the board at its last meeting that their deep-clean programme would be easier than in many trusts.

She said the required cleaning standard had already been carried out during ward transfers under the Meeting Patients' Needs programme in November.

Chris Hodgson, director of estates and facilities for the trust, said the clean would build on the high standards of cleanliness at East Lancashire hospitals.

But the trust's public and patient liaison committee chairman John Amos said he would "wait and see" if the clean-up made a difference.

He said: "It's all well and good but it's the regular cleaning that goes on after this which is the main thing.

"There are all sorts of problems with getting cleaning staff and retaining them throughout the country but I can't help thinking that's what we should be concentrating on instead.

"We will just have to wait and see what happens."

Last year it was revealed he trust was failing to meet targets for tackling MRSA.

Some 67 patients caught MRSA in East Lancashire's hospitals in 2006/7, almost twice as many as the target of 37, according to a govern-ment report published in October.

In September six babies were affected with the deadly PVL strain of MRSA after an outbreak in the neo-natal intensive care unit at Royal Blackburn Hospital.

They were all able to recover as the infection did not get in their blood stream, although one of the baby's parents became ill after catching the bug.