A DAMNING report by MPs said 5,000 people a year were killed by infections caught in hospitals -- where staff were neglecting even such basic hygiene precautions as hand-washing.

So was there not an illuminating insight into changing standards in this newspaper's obituary of 91-year-old former army nurse Edna Longworth, of Darwen?

It told how, on starting work as a student nurse at Blackburn Infirmary after leaving Darwen Grammar School, she had to scrub walls and floors on the wards.

I do suspect that when stickler sisters and dragon-style matrons held much greater sway over such services and nurses were trained in the manner of the late Miss Longworth, you could have eaten your dinner off the ward floor with a lot less worry.