A BASINGSTOKE company has developed an air filtration machine to kill the MRSA hospital superbug that claims thousands of lives each year.

But despite the breakthrough in technology, Energy Technique is finding sales in the UK tough going when faced with a National Health Service that is strapped for cash.

Only this month Leigh Stimpson, managing director of Energy Technique, who lives in Basingstoke, addressed a health commission in Ireland, which is looking into the superbug crisis.

The Irish meeting brought Mr Stimpson into contact with NHS chiefs and members of the public to get across the message that the Nightingale filtration unit has been shown to be 99.8 per cent effective by the Health Protection Agency at Porton Down in Wiltshire.

Mr Stimpson said: "This marked a welcome advance in our efforts to make contact with influential opinion-formers and decision-makers within the NHS."

He heads up a PLC group that has a £14million turnover a year and over the past four years has spent nearly £1million developing the Nightingale. Another £3million was raised in the city a few months ago for Energy Technique to forge ahead with its commercial development.

Nightingale uses ultraviolet radiation combined with sophisticated air-flow systems to attack the DNA of killer germs such as MRSA, anthrax and TB.

The units cost between £6,000 and £10,000 each and sales are starting to go well in America.

Now the American Defence Department is also showing interest which could result in an order of up to 500 units.

Mr Stimpson described the cost of a Nightingale unit as almost negligible compared with the cost of a life.

One unit cleanses the air in a ward of six beds, but he said it can only work effectively alongside properly-scrubbed wards and routine hand-washing by hospital staff and visitors.

Basingstoke hospital is to have some of the first Nightingale units in the country.

Mr Stimpson has donated three units and air conditioning worth £40,000 to the new oncology ward being partly-funded by the Elizabeth Hall Trust.

Mr Stimpson was full of praise for Basingstoke hospital chiefs.

He said: "They are taking the controlling of infection seriously."

Nightingale is manufactured at Energy Technique's factory in Surrey and distributed through a warehouse off Lister Road in Basingstoke.

The company has had a distribution centre in Basingstoke - where it employs 20 people - for three years. It expects the headcount to rise to 40 throughout the next year as it is doubling the size of its distribution operation on the same site.

As he fights to take Nightingale into more UK hospitals, Mr Stimpson said: "The growing threat of MRSA in our hospitals is an issue that affects everybody."