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The deaths of seven patients at Glasgow’s landmark super-hospital are now being investigated, prosecutors have confirmed.
The revelation that another two deaths are being examined after cancer patients, many of them children, contracted infections linked to Queen Elizabeth university hospital’s (QEUH) contaminated water supply and ventilation system, comes after Scottish Labour made public further evidence of political pressure being applied 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 23-year-old Molly Cuddihy and Andrew Slorance, a former Scottish government civil servant, were among those being looked at and it pledged to keep their families informed of progress.
Cuddihy, who was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer at the age of 15, was treated at the royal hospital for children and the adjacent QEUH, which are both part of a six-year public inquiry that reached its final stages last month. She died last August, her organs irreparably weakened by the powerful drugs used to combat the infections as well as her cancer treatment.
The inquiry heard devastating new evidence from the health board, including their admission that serious infections in 84 child cancer patients, two of whom died, were probably caused by the contaminated water system.
The COPFS had previously confirmed that investigations were under way into four deaths, including those of 10-year-old Milly Main, who died in 2017, two other children and 73-year-old Gail Armstrong, who died in 2019 and was being treated for an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma when she contracted a fungal infection commonly associated with pigeon droppings.
In addition, the COPFS said on Saturday it had received a report in connection with the death in 2021 of 65-year-old Anthony Dynes, who was also being treated at the QEUH for non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
The health board has offered a “sincere and unreserved apology” to those affected and insisted it is a “very different organisation” than the one involved in the design and construction of the hospital a decade ago.
Three senior microbiologists who first raised the alarm about infection control problems told the inquiry in its final days that they still had “significant concerns” about the extent to which necessary changes had been instigated by senior management.
At first minister’s questions last Thursday, the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, said he had “damning evidence” from minutes of meetings between Glasgow health board officials and the Scottish government that “political pressure” was applied to open the new hospital before it was ready.
This has previously been denied by the first minister, John Swinney, and the former first minister Nicola Sturgeon.
Sarwar told MSPs: “That decision to open the hospital early has resulted in a decade of lies, deceit and cover-up, bullying and gaslighting of staff, families being lied to and denied the truth and infections that led to the deaths of children and possibly adults too – all because politics was put before patient safety.”
