Health executives have admitted the number of patients infected with a potentially fatal bug while staying in hospital is increasing.

Brighton Health Care NHS Trust recorded 314 MRSA cases for the first nine months of this year.

The figure is already higher than last year's total of 262, although none of the cases so far has been serious.

MRSA, or Methicillin Resistant Staphlycoccus Aureus, is common in hospitals across the country and can be fatal for people in a weak condition which leaves them open to infections.

The trust's infection control team says part of the problem is that it does not have enough staff and time to give all workers in close contact with patients regular training on how to prevent infections spreading.

The team wants to employ three more specialist nurses and a secretary to help it tackle the problem caused by all types of infections, ranging from MRSA to food poisoning.

The move would cost about £92,000 a year but could save the trust up to £16.5 million annually.

But the trust board says it cannot be certain at this stage it will be able to afford the extra funding when it draws up its annual budget next year.

Chief executive Stuart Welling said there were a number of equally important requests for more funding from other areas of the trust, such as extra nurses specialising in diabetes and more staff to deal with patient complaints.

He said: "It is going to have to be a matter of prioritising.

"All the demands have good cases and are all very important, but it is going to be difficult to find funding for them all.

"We are going to have to make some very difficult decisions next year."

The trust says its cases of MRSA are no higher or lower than other similar sized trusts in the country, but increasing staff would give them more time to gather as much information as possible so it can have more accurate records.

A report earlier this year by the National Audit Office estimated that as many as 5,000 people die each year from a range of infections picked up in hospitals while the bill to the NHS for dealing with the infections runs into billions of pounds.

The NAO figures show that on average about ten per cent of in-patients contract an infection while staying in hospital. They then end up staying in hospital for an extra 11 days at an average cost of £250 per day.