02/09/2014 East Midlands Today

comment on the latest video from Islamic State. Now though,

And now the news for the East Midlands. I'm Anne Davies.

Good evening. First tonight, scientists in Leicester have

developed a new weapon in the fight against a deadly hospital superbug.

Four people a day are dying from Clostridium difficile, or C Diff.

Now, as Jo Healey explains, researchers say an electronic nose

will give them a huge boost in how we tackle the disease.

infection while in hospital in infection while in hospital in

Leicester. He says he suffered terribly.

It completely wiped them out. You go from being fit and healthy to being

bedridden within days, and that is really awful. His father survived,

but every year in this country, more than 1500 people who are affected

die. It is most associated with

hospitals, and it costs the NHS millions of pounds each year, both

to control and to treat, but treating it is difficult, because

there are more than 450 different strains of it.

So that is where this electronic nose comes in. It can analyse

patients' faeces, find the bug and the variety.

What we have been doing is sniffing out the bugs here. We are taking the

gases that, from the bugs, and we chemically fingerprint them on this

machine here. That will produce a chemical fingerprint that allows us

to love that the individual chemical molecules that make up the smell.

The real significance of that is, we are able to differentiate those that

are infectious and those that are not infectious from the smells.

At the moment, patient get the blanket treatment with antibiotics.

This electronic nose and distinguished between the different

strains, and therefore allow a lot more targeted treatment to be given

to patients. And save lives? Yes, it would mean that the patient is not

given an antibiotic that does not work.

the right type of it, you can get the right type of it, you can get

better success, and better survival, and that is what we would all

welcome. Hospitals are working hard to reduce C Diff, but also welcomed

the new research, which will help even more patients.

But there have been developments tonight, with health officials

warning of a new superbug heading our way. More on that in a moment,

but first, hospitals have made some pretty big steps against C Diff,

haven't they? Yes, in recent years, there have been big incentives for

hospitals to tackle this awful diarrhoea infection. This shows the

number of cases of C Diff our main number of cases of C Diff our main

hospitals are allowed to have in a year. The red figures show how many

they actually recorded. They say most were not due to deficiencies in

care, but for every case over and above the permitted totals, where

patients got the infections in hospital, the hospital could be

fined ?50,000 per patient. Earlier this year, that was reduced to a

penalty of ?10,000 mark but still, a big incentive to take control.

Absolutely. And tell it about this new horrendous superbug? Yes, I am

told they are now worried about a new group of antibiotic resistant

bowel bacteria, known as CRE. It is a major public health concern. Cases

are spreading in London and the north`west, and from next month,

patients here will be screened for it if they are going into our

hospitals. Improvements to commuter rail links

between Nottingham, Newark and Lincoln have been given the go`ahead

by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The upgrade of the Castle Line

follows years of campaigning by local businesses and politicians.

It'll cut journey times and the project could be completed

by next May. Our Political Editor John Hess

has the details. When it comes to rail investment,

the Casa line has tended to be the bridesmaid rather than the bride. ``

Castle Line. But it has found a rather unexpected suitor. These

lines up overcrowded, infrequent, and doesn't go fast enough, so we

need a regular service to Nottingham, a direct service every

hour. We want to make sure there are many

more services on line between Lincoln and Newark. That is what we

can deliver. It became one of those battle ground issues during the

Newark parliamentary by`election. At present, the current rail service

stops in many villages along the route. It is slow, and then take

more than an hour from Lincoln to Nottingham. The investment, costing

almost one in the pounds, will double the number of direct

services, especially between Newark and Nottingham, cutting journey

times by anything between 15 and 20 minutes. No doubt, much to the

relief of regular passengers. I think it would be nice, because we

get really rough trains on this line. Most of it is just standing in

one place, so yes, it is badly needed.

I started at the University of Nottingham in September. And using a

fairly regularly, and the quicker and more often the trains are, the

better. I think it is very badly needed.

A lot of people go through nothing in Lincoln, and they are some of the

main centres. You will get a seat for a start, so that is a plus.

Paying the fare to have to stand isn't really acceptable.

This is a line where you can travel faster along it in 1909 than you can

today. I think it will bring thousands of jobs to the area, and

it will help anyone who commutes, who goes to college, who wants to go

shopping in any of the towns or villages in this area. It will be a

massive benefit. Of course, the cash being spent on a just do is a lot of

money, and Nottinghamshire itself does benefit from that, but this is

a huge step forward for the area. After several weeks of negotiations

with East Midlands Trains and local councils, I understand that the

Department for Transport will make a formal announcement in the next week

or so. Sport, and one football result

tonight. It was a local derby between Notts County and Mansfield

Town in the first round of the Johnstone's Paint Trophy, with The

Magpies winning 2`0. That's your news. So, it's goodbye

from me, but with your weather now, Thank you. Fairly quiet with the

weather at the moment. Drive, mostly cloudy, and rather warm as the theme

for the next couple of days, but it is dependent on how much sunshine we

get. Where we get ploughed, we're looking at a bit as not to 17 or 18

degrees, but in the sun, they will be rocketing around 22 or 23

Celsius. We have a fair amount of cloud at the moment, and that cloud

will actually thinking through the night, so we could get a mist and

hill fog across the Peak District later on in the night, but it will

be a warm one. Temperature is not falling much lower than around 14 or

15 degrees, so a warm nights to come. Tomorrow morning, we start off

with quite a lot of cloud, so a murky start, mist around here and

there as well. Slowly but surely, the cloud will thin and break into

the afternoon, so we will thin and break into the afternoon, so we

were, mist around here and there as well. Slowly but surely, the cloud

will thin and break into the afternoon, so we were getting

brighter days of sunshine coming through it the next few days.

Good evening. Thankfully over the next few days temperatures are not

that likely to be too close to the 14 degrees we saw across North West

Scotland today under grey and gloomy skies. But more akin to the 23

degrees we saw in Northolt under fairly sunny conditions. Over the

next few days we have a south-easterly drift that. Pushes

away the cloud we've seen across Scotland and Northern Ireland a bit.

But we have cloud heading our way. It's not clear blue skies by any

means. Tonight, it won't be clear skies everywhere. We will see a bit

more cloud develop across central and eastern parts of England.

Turning misty in a few spots. That cloud across western Scotland and

Northern Ireland and in between, where we see the clearer skies, even

a few mist and fog patches here and there. Dropping temperatures in the

countryside, but for most, a milder start to the morning compared with

this morning. Still the cloud across northern and western Scotland,