Holiday mum dies of sepsis after getting scratch in sea

A MOTHER died on holiday after doctors in Bulgaria mistook signs of sepsis for a torn muscle.

Liz Fairclough, 51, scratched her leg while swimming in the sea on holiday last summer – and the cut became infected.

Hospital doctors in Bulgaria initially missed the wound altogether, and then wrongly diagnosed her.

An inquest has now heard that had she been in a UK hospital, NHS doctors would have spotted the ‘rash-like’ skin infection and administered antibiotics.

Tragically, Mrs Fairclough, a mother- offour from Lancashire, was not properly treated and her condition rapidly deteriorated. She eventually had an operation but it failed to stop the infection spreading through her body, and the married teaching assistant died on August 18.

Sepsis, known as the ‘silent killer’, develops when an infection such as blood poisoning sparks a violent immune response in which the body attacks its own organs. It is the leading cause of avoid- able death in the UK, affecting an estimated 260,000 people a year and killing at least 44,000. The Daily Mail has been campaigning since January last year to raise awareness of the symptoms of the condition, in a bid to reduce the death toll.

In December the UK Government pledged to pour resources Septic shock: Liz Fairclough into a major sepsis public awareness drive and last week the World Health Organisation agreed to set up a global taskforce to raise the profile of sepsis around the world. Mrs Fair- clough was on holiday in Burgas, on the Black Sea coast, with her husband Andrew, when she developed ‘ cellulitis’, a skin infection easily treated with antibiotics, Preston Coroner’s Court heard.

The inquest heard her initial treatment at Burgas Hospital focused on an unrelated bang to her head, received while falling into a swimming pool a few days before receiving the scratch, and doctors initially failed to spot the leg wound.

Mr Fairclough, 56, said doctors diagnosed the rash as signs of a torn muscle and she was sent back to her hotel with related medication.

She returned to the hospital a short time later in agony. An operation to relieve some of the pressure building up on her thigh took place.

She was transferred to intensive care, where her condition deteriorated and she died.

Recording a narrative verdict, Lancashire Coroner Dr James Adeley said Mrs Fairclough died after ‘opportunities for treatment’ were missed.

Professor Satyan Rajbhandari, a consultant physician who reviewed her case, said had she been treated in the UK, she may have survived. He said: ‘If she had been treated at an NHS hospital, when her general observations included low blood pressure, any suspected underlying infection would then have been treated with antibiotics.’