LONDON, March 29: Around 13 National Health Service hospitals in England will miss a government deadline to complete a “deep clean” of their wards to help combat superbug infections, Health Minister Ben Bradshaw said on Saturday.

But the country’s other 170 general hospitals will complete the 60 million pound hygiene blitz by the March 31 target date, he told BBC television.

Bradshaw said the independent Healthcare Commission watchdog would now follow up the programme by conducting inspections “to make sure that all hospitals have hygiene and cleanliness policies that are as good as the best.”

The national deep clean, announced by Prime Minister Gordon Brown last September, has been criticised as a publicity stunt. Health experts stressed that regular cleaning was required, rather than a one-off scrub up that would only have a temporary effect on tackling hospital-acquired infections.

Leading medical journal the Lancet said Brown was “pandering to populism”, adding that the proven way to stop superbug infections was to make sure that doctors, nurses and visitors washed their hands properly.

The government said the deep clean was just part of a wider set of measures to reduce potentially deadly infections such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile.

Recent figures have shown rates of both infections in decline after rising steeply over the past decade.

Conservative Health Spokesman Andrew Lansley said the deep clean had not been properly funded.

He said hospitals had been forced to cover at least 23 million pounds of the cost from other budgets, according to Freedom of Information requests.

—Reuters