THE battle against hospital superbugs has taken an alarming twist with the discovery of an infection resistant to all forms of antibiotics, experts in the North-East warned last night.

Professor Adrian Walmsley said the world's first confirmed case of a bacteria which cannot be destroyed even by a "last resort" antibiotic had been identified.

The revelation came on the day that the Government stepped up measures to tackle the rising number of MRSA outbreaks.

Until now the hospital-acquired infection MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphlyloccus Aureas) could be treated by using the last resort antibiotic vancomycin.

But Prof Walmsley, an expert in infectious diseases, says the first reported case of an MRSA-type bug which is resistant to vancomycin was reported this week in the US.

"Now that this condition has turned up in a patient in America, you are going to see strains that are not only methicillin resistant as in MRSA but are also vancomycin resistant, and this drug was the last resort for treating these infections," said Prof Walmsley, who is based at Durham University's Queen's Campus in Stockton.

The professor, whose research team is working on finding new ways to combat superbugs, predicted that it would "not take too long" before the new type of infection reached our shores.

Prof Walmsley revealed that he is helping to develop a new way of cleaning hospitals. "One area we are involved in at the moment is the use of ozone as a cleaning agent," he said. "We are actually working with a local company to develop a kind of portable ozone generator which could be used for fumigating wards."

A league table of the best and worst performing NHS trusts was also published for the first time, allowing the public to see if their local hospital has made any headway in cutting MRSA.

Most North-East hospitals have relatively low levels of MRSA outbreaks, and two North Yorkshire hospitals - York and Harrogate - feature in the top ten trusts with the lowest MRSA rates in the country.

The number one trust, York, which had a rate per 1,000 bed days of only 0.04, appears to have benefited from a scheme which has seen most doctors and nurses wearing bottles of alcohol-based hand cleansing gel on their belts.

The figures came as the Chief Medical Officer for England Sir Liam Donaldson announced that "bug-buster" bosses would be appointed in every NHS trust to impose strict rules to cut infections

Hospital-acquired infections strike about 100,000 people every year in England, costing £1bn and resulting in an estimated 5,000 deaths.

But simple measures, such as making sure doctors and nurses wash their hands between patients, could dramatically cut these figures.

The latest figures, released by the Department of Health, showed that the total number of MRSA cases increased from 7,281 in 2001-02 to 7,384 in 2002-03.

There are a variety of reasons for the rise of superbugs, including poor hygiene, more advanced surgery techniques and the over-prescription of antibiotics.

The bug normally enters the wounds of hospital patients weakened by disease or injury and is especially dangerous after surgery.

In the North-East there were reductions in the rate of MRSA cases at Newcastle, South Tees, North Tees and Hartlepool, South Tyneside and Gateshead.

The rate of MRSA cases increased slightly in County Durham and Darlington, City Hospitals Sunderland and Northumbria Healthcare.