When you go to the hospital you would hope that your health would be a primary concern, notwithstanding murderous nurses and superbugs such as MRSA and E coli but it appears that if you’re ill in Cumbria you shouldn’t eat the food either. It’s not uncommon for patients’ visitors to bring their sick friends and relatives food, it started with a bag of grapes and today you’re just as likely to see pizza boxes and Tupperware as fruiterers’ brown paper bags.

People like their familiar foods, so home cooking is always popular but people also regard take-away food as a treat and getting a treat like a takeaway meal brings some cheer when you’re suffering. Those used to be the reasons but now it seems that hospital kitchens are such a health hazard that the only really safe way to eat in hospital is to have it delivered! In the worst of these cases a hospital in Cumbria managed to rack up almost 20 contraventions of environmental health directives including broken bins, damp on the walls and dirty surfaces. Despite the failings the kitchens were still awarded a three star ‘good’ rating by the Copeland borough council ‘Scores on the Doors’ inspectors.

‘Scores on the Doors’ is a scheme whereby scores are awarded to commercial and public kitchens and the award is then posted in the front of the premises so that any-one entering is able to see immediately how they performed. Despite the fact that inspectors found 19 breaches in food hygiene during two visits to the hospital kitchens Alan Davidson, estates and facilities manager at the West Cumberland Hospital said that: “All issues raised by Copeland Borough Council’s environmental health team leaders in their routine reports dated September 2010 and April 2011 have been addressed. “This will be demonstrated at the next scheduled inspection of the West Cumberland Hospital which we envisage being in September 2011.”

If you went into a hotel to stay and you found out that although the kitchen making your meals and sending up room service had scored an acceptable ‘good’ rating (not amazing but still…) the food is prepared in a kitchen which broke 19 of the Environmental Health’s guidelines for food hygiene you wouldn’t be impressed and would probably choose not to put too much weight in the ‘Scores on the Doors’ scheme ever again as well as eating out for the rest of your stay.

Now if you found yourself in hospital imaging how much less impressed you’d be. People at risk of infection and contamination are lined up in bed expecting the care and treatment that we in the First World have come to expect thanks to the tradition of Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole’s efforts in the Crimea war. And what do they get? A menu which is designed around a budget rather than nutritional requirements of the patients prepared in an area which is, by any other standard, unfit. The inspectors found out of date food, peeling paint, filthy floors and storage racks among the list of faults. @dancash is a feature writer living in the south of England. To keep his kitchen and all his crockery clean he uses a Bosch dishwasher and keeps the kitchen taps and other surfaces clean by wiping them down before and after he’s used them. Thanks to this he hasn’t seen the inside of a hospital in years!