A FURIOUS widow has blasted the standards of cleanliness at the hospital where her husband died after contracting the MRSA superbug.

Janice Winsor, 68, of Fairmead, Cam, told the Gazette that the isolation unit at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in which her husband, Cam parish councillor David Winsor, spent his last few weeks was dirty and a disgrace.

She explained that Mr Winsor, 65, was infected with the superbug during an operation in October, after which his health deteriorated rapidly.

He died last Thursday from acute renal failure, as well as having pneumonia and septicaemia. The death certificate cites MRSA as one of the causes of death.

Mrs Winsor said: "He certainly did not deserve to die the death that he did.

"In his final weeks he was supposed to be in an infection controlled room but the floor was covered in dirt, the stands that his drips were on were dirty, the sink was an absolute disgrace and his bedsheets were just left with blood stains on them."

The couple's son Anthony added that they had lost all faith in Stoke Mandeville. "We feel a lot of anger towards them. You are supposed to go into hospital to get better not get worse," he said, adding that he had written to Stroud MP David Drew to express his disgust at the situation.

David Winsor, who was paralysed and had to use an electric wheelchair, originally went in to Stoke Mandeville to have two sores treated in January 2004 and was released three months later.

He was, however, re-admitted last June because one of the sores would not heal and in the third of three further operations he was infected with MRSA.

After becoming very poorly he made something of a recovery around Christmas time after a course of antibiotics, but when he was moved out of isolation and in to a ward with another MRSA sufferer he quickly relapsed.

Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust, which incorporates Stoke Mandeville, would not comment on Mr Winsor's case because of patient confidentiality but offered to address the family's concerns through their Patient Advice and Liaison Service.

The Trust's head of communications Rachael De Souza said: "We regret the distress suffered by the patient's relatives and would like to affirm that we will do all that is possible to support them in their loss."

She added that the Trust's MRSA rates had declined in the past three years due to "stringent hygiene and infection controls" and that the decline was in line with the national level.