Doctors warn more must be done as cases of highly contagious bacteria rise

More than one in ten cases of Clostridioides difficile (C. diff) were fatal in 2023/2024, with cases rising sharply since the pandemic.

C. diff is found in people's bowels and can lead to infection alongside other factors such as hospital exposure, old age, and use of antibiotics.

Dr Kerrie Davies of the C. Diff Trust told Metro: "We cannot afford for more patients to be dying of this every year.

"We can’t afford for more patients to be taken out of the economy every year because they can’t function due to this illness.

"Patients with it tell us how scared they are. It is the worst diarrhoea that you have ever, ever had in your life."

Read more: Few improvements in NHS patient safety ‘despite millions spent’, review finds

Read more: Leading doctors join call for BMA strike climbdown

Data from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) shows that there were 12,601 cases of C. diff reported in 2019.

The annual number of reported cases has increased by more than 6,600, with 19,239 cases reported to the UKHSA from February 2024 to January 2025.

Cases of C. diff peaked in 2007 when there were more than 50,000 cases, and deaths surpassed 7,000.

In the 2023/2024 period, C. diff had a 12.9 per cent fatality rate, as 2,164 patients died from the infection.

Dr Davies, who has researched the bacteria for 20 years, added: "We were world-leading in bringing rates down to very low levels, but now there is a breakdown in infection prevention.

"There is a lack of focus since the Covid pandemic. We do not want levels to go back to where they were previously, where we had big outbreaks affecting a lot of people.

"It’s a significant number of people that do die from this. For those that don’t die, it causes huge impacts on their lives."

Symptoms of C. diff include severe diarrhoea, a high temperature, stomach ache, a loss of appetite, and feeling sick.

C. diff is a normally harmless bacteria that lives in your bowel, but the balance of bacteria can sometimes change, leading to infection.

When someone has the infection, it spreads easily to others as the bacteria from diarrhoea get onto surfaces and objects.

Dr Davies explained: "Patients are scared, and they are frightened.

"They tell us they’re really worried about leaving their houses because they don’t know if they’ll be near a toilet when they go out.

"It can affect their ability to work. It takes them a long time to recover.

"Even though they might be asymptomatic, their diarrhoea may have resolved, the frailty that it imposes on the patient, actually, that takes them a long time to recover from.

"It is a difficult infection, it is complicated. You can carry this and not be affected. You won’t have an infection because your microbiome is intact."