IT IS no wonder that the state of the National Health Service, created with such enormous optimism by the Labour Party in 1948 and for almost 60 years the envy of the world, is now so high on the list of the priorities of British voters.

Until a few years ago, whatever was said about waiting lists for hip operations or the extraction of wisdom teeth or in-growing toe nails, we always knew that if we were in desperate need of emergency treatment in Britain we would get it immediately and it would be the best.

Today, however, although no such opinion poll has so far been conducted, it is a fairly safe bet to stay that for most people unless they were certain that they were dying anyway they would rather stay out of hospital and take their chances rather than be admitted for treatment and come out having caught a life-threatening superbug.

Of course Mrs Winsor is appalled that the death of her 65-year-old husband, who had battled for decades with his own particular disability, was at least partly attributable to MRSA, probably contracted in one of the country's most respected hospitals. Yet despite its enviable reputation the hospital was, according to Mrs Winsor, conspicuously dirty and her husband was left to lie in bloody sheets.

What price hospital cleaners and nursing auxiliaries? A couple of dozen of these could probably be hired in most hospitals for the price of a single high-salaried manager - and save a great many more lives.

It was Florence Nightingale way back in the Crimean War who first drew the value of cleanliness to the attention of the eminent medical practitioners of her day and saved hundreds of lives just by washing bandages before re-using them, and that was without the benefits of modern sterilising methods and wonder drugs such as penicillin.

The party that could guarantee a return to the standards of hygiene imposed by the old-fashioned matrons of the 1950s would win a landslide in the next election.