Scotland’s largest health board has finally admitted that contaminated water at a Glasgow super-hospital caused serious infections in child cancer patients that were linked to four deaths.
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC) made the dramatic U-turn in closing submissions to a long-running inquiry that was launched after deaths linked to infections, including that of 10-year-old Milly Main, who died in August 2017 after contracting an infection as she recovered from leukaemia treatment.
On Monday morning the Scottish Conservatives demanded an urgent statement from the SNP government’s health secretary, Neil Gray, on the 11th-hour admission to the Scottish hospitals inquiry, which was set up in 2020 to examine the design and construction of the crisis-hit Queen Elizabeth university hospital in Glasgow and the Royal hospital for children, which are on the same campus.
Milly was one of two children who died at the Royal hospital for children after being treated on a cancer ward that was later closed because of concerns about water contamination.
In closing submissions to the inquiry published before final oral hearings, the health board said it accepted it was “more likely than not” that the children’s infections had “a connection to the state of the hospital water system”.
It added: “NHSGGC accepts that, on the balance of probabilities, there is a causal connection between some infections suffered by patients and the hospital environment, in particular the water system.”
Milly’s mother, Kimberly Darroch, welcomed the admission but said it should have come much earlier for the families involved.
Darroch told BBC Scotland News: “As a mother, I’ve spent six years fighting for answers that should have been given at the very beginning.
“It is good news that the health board has admitted that, on the balance of probabilities, there was a causal connection between the environment and Milly’s bloodstream infection. This acknowledgment is a significant milestone for our family, but it also highlights how hard families have had to fight just to have the truth recognised.”
The U-turn was hailed as a “turning point” by the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, who has pressed the board and the Scottish government for answers for years alongside Darroch.
Writing in the Scottish Mail on Sunday, he called for a corporate homicide investigation that is in progress to be expanded to include politicians whom he accused of a “cover-up”.
Describing it as “one of the worst failures in modern Scottish public life”, Sarwar wrote: “Since the hospital opened, there has been a litany of serious problems: concerns about water safety, environmental risks, governance failures, and infections that devastated families.
“NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde has been named as a suspect in a corporate homicide investigation relating to the deaths of patients including 10-year-old Milly Main. In my opinion, so should the SNP ministers responsible for the cover-up, because this is a serious criminal matter.”
A Scottish government spokesperson said: “We established a statutory public inquiry so that families could get answers to their questions, and so that lessons can be learned for future hospital projects.
“As an independent core participant of the inquiry, the Scottish government is committed to assisting the inquiry and therefore it would be inappropriate to comment any further at this time.”
A spokesperson for NHSGGC said: “We remain fully committed to supporting the inquiry in its investigations.”
