I WHOLEHEARTEDLY agree with "Patient Patient" (Your Letters, May 11) regarding the disgraceful conditions in many of our hospitals, and Bury General in particular.

These conditions will prevail until radical steps are taken to reduce visiting hours; reduce the number of visitors at any one time; curtail children's visiting; clean the wards and other areas of the hospital seven days a week; reduce the amount of traffic on the wards; and clean the patients' lockers and tables regularly.

Bury General has a very good infection control team to advise on these matters, and if they were listened to, hospital-acquired infections, which kill 5,000 patients a year nationwide, would start to reduce.

Does the public know that some local nurses are asked to work a 14-hour shift, with no break off the ward for meals? And will the new-style matron make any difference? Very unlikely. The matron of former days has gone for ever. Top hospital jobs today seem to go to administrators from commerce or industry with little or no knowledge of hospital hygiene, let alone patient care. The budget always rules.

Florence Nightingale's dictum that "The hospital should do the patient no harm" is long forgotten. It is time to get back to an "old fashioned" standard of nursing which included pride, respect and professionalism.

"DISGUSTED SRN", Bury.