A PIONEERING Huddersfield company is at the forefront of the battle against the killer hospital superbug MRSA.

The Aire Group has teamed up with Brighouse ambulance makers UV Modular, Cleckheaton-based Ferno UK and American corporation Steris to provide a revolutionary way to clean ambulances so they are sterile.

It means that traditional disinfectants could be confined to history as the new system - called vapourised hydrogen peroxide (VHP) - thoroughly cleanses ambulances without them being touched by human hands.

This system is already used in the pharmaceutical, food production and laboratory research industries.

The move - revealed yesterday at the national Ambulance Services Association exhibition Ambex in Harrogate - comes after scientists found MRSA in frontline ambulances.

Traditional cleaning methods failed to shift the bug and many similar ones such as TB, e-coli, salmonella, flu, anthrax, botulism, Legionnaires' Disease and even smallpox.

Many of these are resistant to antibiotics.

This potentially puts crews and patients at risk and may also transfer the infection into hospitals.

Research trials involved frontline emergency vehicles from half of the ambulance trusts in the UK.

The tests showed that traditional liquid disinfectants had little impact on removing the bugs - but VHP killed them all.

Ambulance Service Association chief executive Richard Diment said: "The trials show the importance of infection control in ambulances and that VHP is a highly-effective product for decontamination."

VHP is now used in hospitals to sterilise medical instruments, but Steris wanted to take this technology out of hospitals and use it on a far bigger scale, to cleanse vehicles such as ambulances, paramedic motorbikes, cars and other patient transfer or emergency vehicles.

The system does not damage the internal surfaces or sensitive electronic equipment in vehicles.

VHP is a dry vapour which is odourless, colourless and non-corrosive. But it needs to be used in a tightly-controlled and enclosed environment - which is where The Aire Group comes in.

The Longwood-based emergency equipment specialists devised a special Aireshelta inflatable building, large enough to take several vehicles at once and keep the VHP contained in it.

UV Modular has made the world's first ambulance specially modified to allow the VHP system to be plugged into the back of it for easy decontamination.

Ferno are pre-hospital medical equipment experts.

The firm has been leading the testing of the VHP technology with more than half the ambulance trusts in the UK - including ones in Yorkshire.

Aire Group chief executive Richard Bailey said: "Millions of people are taken by ambulance to hospital each year. If all ambulances were totally cleansed of all micro-organisms - including MRSA - it would dramatically reduce the risk of cross-contamination.

"When someone arrives in an ambulance they will be transferred from a stretcher to a trolley - possibly a wheelchair - to a bed in casualty, then perhaps another bed in a recovery or assessment unit and finally to a bed in a ward.

"Just think how many pieces of equipment could become contaminated. All this equipment - not just ambulances - can be cleansed in an Aireshelta."

He added: "The VHP process takes limited time, so the ambulance is hardly off the run.

"It is what the world has been waiting for. Cleansing within the Health Service is only the start of this product's potential."