An under-pressure health trust is celebrating after completing a year without a single case of MRSA infection.

Croydon Health Services NHS Trust has endured a 2012 to forget following the resignations of both its chief executive Nick Hulme and chairman of directors, Brian Philpott.

However there was cause for celebration after figures showed Croydon University Hospital has not had in incident of MRSA infection since March 2 last year.

Acting chief executive Tony Leonard said. “Staff can be rightly proud of this achievement. It shows how far we have come in infection control since the financial year 2007/08 when we recorded 14 cases.

“Controlling and preventing infection is a major part of what we do all day every day, in hospital, in theatres, in clinics and in patents’ own homes and it is a real team effort which has led to this success.”

The success has been put down to screening nearly all patients on admission, if they were emergencies, or before hand if planned, rigorous cleaning practices deep cleaning of wards and introducing a new blood culture collection system.

The Trust is still faced with challenges regarding cases of C.Diff, with 27 cases this year, though this was a large drop from the 174 cases recorded in 2007/08.