Families to give evidence to Scottish Hospitals Inquiry

In 2019, Beth and Sandie Armstrong lost their mother, Gail, who had been receiving blood cancer treatment as an inpatient when she was diagnosed with cryptococcus and died.

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Beth Armstrong will give evidence to the Scottish Hospitals Inquiry today, along with Mrs Slorance and Mrs Dynes. 

Speaking on behalf of the families ahead of their evidence sessions, Mrs Slorance - whose husband, Andrew, contracted Covid while receiving treatment for Mantle Cell Lymphoma - said: “We placed our trust in the health board and the hospital to keep our loved ones safe, they not only let our families down, but the health board added to our trauma by hiding the truth.

“We have fought for every scrap of paper we have received, our grief suspended while we fight for the truth.

“Today, years after their deaths, we finally have the opportunity to describe the lengths that NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde went to, to stop us knowing the events leading up to the deaths of our husbands and mum.”

It previously emerged that NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde hired a contractor to monitor the social media activity of critic including Mrs Slorance, whose husband was a senior Scottish Government official who involved in managing the the Covid response.

The QEUH campus in Glasgow (Image: PA)

Ms Slorance said the families wanted to see all high-risk patients transferred "immediately" away from the QEUH campus "to alternative safe hospital environments that meet the requirements of these very vulnerable patients".

She added: "In the longer term, the world class facility that was promised must be delivered for the people of Scotland.”

The inquiry is examining the extent that non-compliance with relevant regulations and guidance led to ventilation and water contamination issues at the Glasgow hospital.

Hearings this week will  also explore the actions taken to resolve these issues after the handover in 2015 and the extent of their effectiveness.

Earlier this month, the inquiry heard evidence from Dr Jennifer Armstrong, the medical director for NHSGGC, that the health board "did not get what we expected" from the hospital build. 

The QEUH campus, which includes the Royal Hospital for Children, was hailed as a world leading facility when it opened.

However, a string of infection outbreaks and concerns around the water and ventilation systems emerged after it opened.

The deaths of several immunocompromised patients including 10-year-old Milly Main have come under scrutiny amid concerns they were linked to contamination of the water supplies or inadequate ventilation.

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Dr Armstrong said she had become aware early on about problems affecting the ventilation system in both the adult and children’s wards used for patients needing bone marrow transplants, adding that management were "taken aback by the fact that it had not been built right". 

Dr Christine Peters, a consultant microbiologist and whistleblower, also told the inquiry that there was a "serious problem of a culture which does not value honesty" within NHSGGC. 

However, in his evidence to the inquiry Professor Alastair Leanord, the chief of medicine for diagnostics at NHSGGC, said that genomic sequencing work on tens of thousands of water samples taken between 2015 and 2020 at the Glasgow hospital found no evidence of direct transmission of bacteria in the environment to patients, suggesting it was not the source of infections.