Deaths of two more patients at Glasgow hospital under investigation | Scotland
The deaths of seven patients at Glasgow’s iconic super-hospital are currently under investigation, prosecutors have confirmed.
The revelation that two more deaths are being investigated after cancer patients, many of them children, contracted infections linked to the contaminated water supply and ventilation system at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH), comes after Scottish Labor released new evidence of political pressure to open the campus in April 2015, just before the general election.
The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) said on Saturday that the cases of Molly Cuddihy, 23, and Andrew Slorance, a former Scottish Government civil servant, were among those being reviewed and pledged to keep their families informed of progress.
Cuddihy, who was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer aged 15, was treated at the Royal Children’s Hospital and the adjacent QEUH, both of which are part of a six-year public inquiry which reached its final stages last month. She died last August, her organs irreparably weakened by the powerful drugs used to fight infections as well as her cancer treatment.
The inquiry heard devastating new evidence from the health board, including the admission that serious infections in 84 children with cancer, two of whom died, were likely caused by the contaminated water system.
COPFS had previously confirmed that investigations were underway into four deaths, including those of Milly Main, 10, who died in 2017, two other children and Gail Armstrong, 73, who died in 2019 and was being treated for an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma when she contracted a fungal infection commonly associated with pigeon droppings.
Furthermore, the COPFS indicated on Saturday that it had received a report in connection with the death in 2021 of Anthony Dynes, 65, also treated at the QEUH for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
The health board offered a “sincere and unreserved apology” to those affected and insisted it was a “very different organisation” to that involved in the design and construction of the hospital a decade ago.
Three senior microbiologists who first sounded the alarm over infection control problems told the inquiry in its final days they still had “significant concerns” about the extent to which the necessary changes had been driven by senior management.
At Prime Minister’s Questions last Thursday, Scottish Labor leader Anas Sarwar said he had “overwhelming evidence” from minutes of meetings between Glasgow health board officials and the Scottish Government that “political pressure” had been brought to bear to open the new hospital before it was ready.
This has already been denied by the First Minister, John Swinney, and by the former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.
Sarwar told MSPs: “This decision to open the hospital early resulted in a decade of lies, deceit and cover-ups, intimidation and deception of staff, lies to families and denial of the truth and infections that led to the deaths of children and possibly adults too – all because politics was put before patient safety. »
