Here’s your quote of the day:

The 61-year-old immediately decided ‘enough was enough’ and has launched a national campaign for NHS cleanliness

Mrs Pitman said her horses were treated ‘with more respect’ than her 92-year-old father George was in the weeks before his death from Clostridium difficile.

The background?

When her father contracted the superbug that killed him, champion horse trainer Jenny Pitman was appalled by the lack of cleanliness in the hospital.

Her anger was re-doubled when she went back to the same hospital to visit her brother and saw that hygiene levels seemed to have fallen even further…

The retired farmer was treated at the Great Western Hospital in Swindon for stomach cancer late last year but moved to a hospice after his condition deteriorated.

At the hospice he was immediately diagnosed with the deadly bug and he died two weeks later.

Mrs Pitman is furious that the hospital did not test him for C. diff – which has overtaken MRSA as the biggest threat to NHS patients – when he fell ill.

She said: “When my father went into the hospital, the first doctor to check him over said he was in marvellous condition for a 92-year-old…

“On one occasion my father was left alone on a bare mattress with a bed pan for 45 minutes. My sister came to visit and discovered him calling for help because he was in pain.

“Nobody told us he had the infection until he got to the hospice, but they must have been capable of diagnosing it at the hospital.

“I am very aware of hygiene and always have been after a career with horses. But we showed more respect and gave our horses better care than what’s going on in these hospitals. I will not back down on this one.

“I won’t accept that the Government and NHS bosses are doing all they can. The situation is out of control and standards seem to be slipping further.”

Apparently Britain’s health system has deteriorated significantly since 1998. That was the year Jenny Pitman was admitted to a hospital for thyroid cancer, and the treatment was much better. But it got even worse after her father’s treatment:

Her decision to lead a campaign came six weeks ago after her brother Peter Harvey, 62, was admitted to the Great Western Hospital. She said: “When I went back there I realised that nothing has changed, in fact the hygiene standards seemed to have dropped, and I thought enough was enough.”

Wow. Between this and patients pulling their own teeth, I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to be part of this system..