‘IT WAS MURDER’
Mum insists NHS killed cancer patient Milly, 10, who died at superhospital after falling victim to infection
THE mother of a girl who died on a children’s cancer ward after contracting an infection has described her death as murder.
Kimberly Darroch told the Scottish Hospitals Inquiry she wants the children and adult hospitals at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) campus to close.
She believes NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde should be punished after she claims staff covered up the true cause of her daughter’s death, which she found out about two years later in the media.
Milly Main, from Lanark, died in 2017 at the Royal Hospital for Children on the QEUH campus in Glasgow.
The youngster had been undergoing treatment for leukaemia and had received a bone marrow stem cell transplant. But she became seriously unwell with an infection and her condition deteriorated. She died in August 2017, aged ten.
Evidence from her mother was read out as a statement at the inquiry in Edinburgh, which is examining problems at two flagship hospitals, the QEUH and the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People in Edinburgh.
In the statement, Miss Darroch said that she was never given details of the infection that her daughter contracted when she died, which she later discovered contributed towards her death.
Miss Darroch also claimed hospital reports about her meeting doctors to discuss the infection were false.
Her statement said: ‘My view is that the hospital should be closed. I don’t think it’s safe.
‘I feel like the health board need to be punished for all of this.
‘In my eyes, what happened to my daughter is murder.
‘She should still be here and I am trying to come to terms with that after coming to terms with losing her initially. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to. I would never go back to the hospital, never.’
Milly was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in 2012, when she was five years old.
She died after contracting stenotrophomonas – an infection found in water, the inquiry heard. Miss Darroch and her family claim they were unaware of this infection which contributed to her daughter’s death until after she died.
Christine Horne, Miss Darroch’s mother, also had her statement read out at the inquiry yesterday.
She said: ‘We were never told what it [the infection] was and there was never any indication that it was related to the water in the hospital.’
Paying tribute to her granddaughter, who she looked after a couple of times a week, Mrs Horne said: ‘She would always stay one night at the weekend. We would have midnight feasts and watch television until midnight.
‘She made me watch all of the Disney films. She would watch anything, even films you would not think a girl would watch. Spy films, Jaws, everything.
‘We miss her very much. We miss her terribly.’
In 2019, then health secretary Jeane Freeman apologised for the contamination issue at the QEUH, saying parents were entitled to ‘full answers’.
Earlier yesterday, the inquiry heard from Lynn Kearns who criticised the children’s hospital for having no running water while her young son received treatment for a rare disease in the building’s ‘prison-like’ conditions.
She said her son was unable to shower for about two weeks while being treated in the hospital despite vomiting on his own face during treatment.
Mrs Kearns’ son, who is not being named for legal reasons, was 11 when he was diagnosed with a
‘I don’t think it’s safe’
rare and life-threatening blood disorder in December 2017.
He was treated in the Royal Hospital for Children at the QEUH campus between December 2017 and March 2018.
Mrs Kearns said she understood the water supply was cut off due to a certain type of bacteria being found in the system. She said water supply issues at the hospital ward remain a problem today.
After taking her son into the same hospital on Monday, she said she spoke to two maintenance workers who are still changing filters on the sink taps every two months, the inquiry heard.
The inquiry, chaired by Lord Brodie, continues.