Doctor casts doubt on hospital report
Official findings over infection deaths challenged
‘Evidence from around the site’
A LEADING doctor has cast doubt on an official report claiming there was no ‘sound’ evidence linking bird droppings and patient infections at Scotland’s £842million superhospital.
Dr Teresa Inkster has disputed the findings of the independent report, published last month, into two deaths at Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital.
A ten-year-old boy died in December 2018 and a 73-year-old woman passed away in January last year after contracting infections at the hospital, which is also home to the Royal Hospital for Children (RHC).
An independent review concluded that some patients had been ‘exposed to risk that could have been lower’. However, it found no ‘sound’ evidence that there had been ‘avoidable’ deaths at the hospital.
Dr Inkster, who has worked at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC) for eight years, was lead infection control doctor at the hospital between 2016 and 2019.
During that time the children’s cancer wards were forced to close because of a spike in unusual infections.
The wards remain closed while the water and ventilation systems are upgraded.
Dr Inkster also led the probe into two cases of cryptococcus in 2019, a fungal infection associated with pigeon droppings.
The 46-year-old said she initiated the investigation because, to have two patients with such an infection, was ‘very rare’.
She said: ‘I walked around the site and found significant evidence of pigeon faeces close to areas where the patients had been.’
Dr Inkster, who stepped down from her role last year, said that while the report claimed it was not possible to establish how the patients had become infected: ‘All the evidence from around the site is that the probability is that it came from the bird poo.
‘I just don’t know the transmission route – did it come in through a leak in the window, was it in the ventilation system or were there pigeons elsewhere we didn’t find.’
In July 2018, Dr Inkster said she was made aware of reports from 2015 and 2017 which raised concerns about water supply and risk assessments. She believes that if she and her colleagues had been made aware of these reports at the start of the outbreak, in January 2018, it would have sped the process up considerably.
A spokesman for NHSGGC said: ‘As soon as [the reports] were received by the chief executive, these were acted on. Improvements have since been made in the governance of the estates and facilities function.
‘We continue to work with... members of the Oversight Board who have been reviewing the effectiveness of our infection prevention and control procedures, including the concerns Dr Inkster has raised.’