York Hospital is on track to beat this year's tough targets for battling a deadly "superbug" infection.

The news comes after Government figures revealed it is one of the best performing hospitals in the region for driving down rates of the MRSA infection.

This week the Department Of Health released new statistics showing that about 50 per cent of Britain's NHS trusts were failing to meet the Government's target of halving rates of the bug by 2008.

But York Hospitals NHS Trust is among those which are meeting the targets.

With nine cases of the infection between April and September last year - a rate of 0.08 per thousand overnight stays in hospital - it is currently the top performing trust in North Yorkshire.

Between the same months in 2001, there were 21 MRSA cases at the hospital.

Scarborough and North East Yorkshire NHS Trust, which has hospitals in Scarborough, Bridlington, Whitby and Malton, also met its target, with eight cases of the virus between April and September 2005 - a rate of 0.09 per thousand overnight stays.

That was the same rate as Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust for the same period - where five people came down with the bug.

Mike Proctor, director of nursing at York Hospital, said its target for this April was to have no more than 20 MRSA cases over the whole year.

The Government measured hospitals on the number of cases of the infection in a patient's bloodstream, he explained - and by April 2008, these cases should have dropped to 12 in a year if the hospital is to meet its overall target.

He said: "Reducing MRSA in our hospital is something that's really important to us and we work really hard to do it. We're on target - as far as that goes it's a pleasing result.

"It's good to see some results of that.

"We're not complacent, we've still got lots of work to do to make sure that we meet the Government's target.

"It's good news, but it means that we must continue to work hard to drive down these infections."

Gilly Collinson, communications manager for the Scarborough trust, said: "This represents a lot of hard work from staff, including doctors, nurses, cleaners and everyone associated with patient care.

"MRSA is prevalent in the community, and it's going to be a continued effort to keep on top of it."

Updated: 09:14 Thursday, February 09, 2006