Hospitals are beginning to win the war on superbugs after a successful push to get nurses and doctors cleaning their hands more often. The result follows the introduction of a program to boost hand hygiene compliance rates in hospitals by encouraging staff to use alcohol-based hand rubs before and after treating patients.

According to reports from the Herald Sun, a recent audit of 521 Australian hospitals found compliance rates rose to nearly 70 percent from 43 percent in the two years since the program began in 2009. At the same time the number of patients being infected with the superbug staphylococcus aureus, also known as MRSA or golden staph, dropped significantly.

Director of Hand Hygiene Australia Professor Lindsay Grayson, who helped develop the program, said clean hands were the best protection against superbugs like MRSA, which is resistant to antibiotics and spreads quickly through patient contact.

He said while the drop in MRSA rates could not scientifically be proven by better hand cleaning it was "a hell of a coincidence."

The Australian National Hand Hygiene Initiative adopted by hospitals was based on the World Health Organisation's (WHO) advice for staff to clean their hands before and after touching a patient, having contact with their surroundings, and performing a procedure. To make it easier for hospital workers to clean their hands, alcohol-based hand rubs are being installed at the foot or near the head of every bed.

But it seems from the Australian audit, published online by The Medical Journal of Australia, doctors are lagging behind nurses in the hand-cleaning stakes. Nearly three quarters of nurses complied with hand hygiene rules compared to about half of all doctors.