‘i’ll blame maidsTone hospiTal foR my moTheR’s deaTh unTil The day i die’
A woman who lost her mother to C-diff at the height of the outbreak says while her family can never forgive the trust for what happened, she has confidence in the boss currently leading the fight against infection.
Jackie Stewart rushed her mother Mary Hirst into Maidstone Hospital after a fall, but the 83-year-old contracted the superbug twice and died in May 2006.
The 65-year-old is among several families who sued the trust over care given to relatives.
“It is 11 years since mum died and 10 years since the report come out,” said Mrs Stewart from Bearsted. “Even after all this time we still feel so bad, it should never have happened.
“My mum went into that hospital fighting fit. She took no medications, nothing and she had never been in hospital in her life. She even had four children at home.
“Eleven years on and we still look at her photograph and I wonder - ‘how did that happen’?”
Mrs Stewart, like several other relatives, had tried to raise concerns over hygiene standards in the wards, but felt previous managers fobbed them off and didn’t take concerns seriously.
She added: “I will always blame Maidstone Hospital for my mother’s death to the day I die. It took them two years to send us a letter of apology. If they had sent us that letter even a few months after her death we wouldn’t have taken it further.”
The Plantation Lane resident is one of several family members invited to the hospital by Dr Sara Mumford, to see what has changed.
Mrs Stewart added: “When they brought her in she did a fantastic job.”