‘Molly never got to hear it’: fury as denials finally end on Glasgow hospital infections | Glasgow

A.All Molly Cuddihy wanted was for her experience to be understood. This is how he told an inquiry into Scottish hospitals in 2021; She described the “terrifying” seizures and difficulties she experienced after contracting a bacterial infection while undergoing chemotherapy at Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth university hospital. “The environment made me sicker and sicker,” the 19-year-old testified.

Molly was 15 and preparing for her National 5 exam when she was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer. Both were treated at the Royal Children’s Hospital and the adjacent QEUH, part of a six-year public inquiry that has reached its final stages and where devastating new admissions were heard this week.

“There was a critically ill teenager in the hospital building in 2018 who could see what was wrong financially,” said his father, John. She said the clinical care her daughter received was “world class” (a sentiment echoed by all the families affected by this scandal) but that “the basic principles of providing a safe and secure environment for clinicians to work were not in place.”

After years of denial, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde finally admitted this week that serious infections in 84 child cancer patients, including two who died, were likely caused by a contaminated water system at the flagship hospital.

John says the intractable delay in acknowledging what patients, families and whistleblowers have told hospital and health board management since the £842 million superhospital first opened in 2015 has imposed “avoidable distress and harm” on already suffering families. “It’s even more painful that Molly never gets to hear those words.”

Molly Cuddihy died last August, her organs irreparably weakened by powerful drugs used to fight infections as well as cancer treatment.

Last week his father attended in his place to hear submissions from the conclusion of the public inquiry ordered by former Scottish health secretary Jeane Freeman following a high number of deaths and high infection rates. Like other family members whose loved ones had died or become seriously ill, John had been shaken by dramatic U-turns in the medical board’s position.

Another surprising admission, made at the 11th hour, was that the building was not ready to open in April 2015, just before the general election, when the SNP was boasting about Scotland’s largest ever publicly funded NHS construction project.

The health board admitted in December 2014 that “pressure was being applied to open the hospital on time and on budget” despite tests revealing the presence of microbes in the water supply and that they did not have enough staff to maintain the sprawling new campus.

The board, which had previously downplayed the evidence of whistleblowers who had repeatedly raised alarms to administrators, admitted it was “unfair”.

Responding on Thursday, three senior microbiologists seeking to expose the failings pointed out that this delayed and partial apology did not address the behavior of senior management, who described them as “attention-seeking” and “sensationalist” and had failed to investigate their concerns “properly, openly or respectfully” for more than a decade.

The medical board insisted that no individual should be held responsible for institutional failures.

As the week progressed, the families’ shock at the latest admissions turned to anger, and in a stirring closing statement, also delivered on Thursday, they described being “lied to, disbelieved, humiliated and smeared” by the medical board.

Some of them were the first parents to speak out about the inadequate answers they received when they asked why their children were given bottled water or why their specialist pediatric cancer ward was suddenly closed.

“We cannot overstate the level of deceit and conniving cowardice displayed by GGCH during the unfolding of this terrible scandal,” they said. “As men, women and children sickened and died, they told us all: There is nothing to see here.”

They called on GGCH’s past and current leadership to “face reckoning” and issued a chilling warning that “QEUH is not a safe hospital” and that “GGCH’s current leadership cannot be trusted to make it safe”.

This echoed whistleblowers on the same day who said they still had “significant concerns” about the extent to which the necessary changes were being encouraged by senior management.

Scottish Labor Party leader Anas Sarwar described the incident as “the biggest scandal in the history of the Scottish parliament”. He claimed the cover-up went to the extreme and this week called for criminal investigations into the Scottish government ministers responsible at the time, including Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney.

Sarwar campaigned for years alongside Kimberly Darroch after her 10-year-old daughter Milly Main died in August 2017 after contracting an infection while recovering from leukemia treatment.

Further proceedings will follow, with the investigation’s final report due later this year: NHSGCC has been named as a suspect in a corporate murder investigation investigating the deaths of Milly, two other children and a 73-year-old woman on the hospital campus, while prosecutors are also investigating Molly’s death.

In a fierce session of chief minister’s questions on Thursday, Sarwar demanded Swinney tell him “who applied the pressure and why” to open the children’s hospital on the QEUH campus, weeks after an internal report warned of a high risk of infection for children with weakened immune systems.

Swinney said the Scottish government was not notified until March 2018 but had committed to publishing cabinet minutes or ministerial correspondence and had “every confidence” that the inquiry’s chairman, Lord Brodie, would “provide the open scrutiny and truth that families and everyone else needs”.

This week, NHSGCC barrister Peter Gray KC insisted the health board was a “very different organisation” to the one involved in the design and construction of the hospital a decade ago and offered an “unreserved apology” on its behalf “for the distress and trauma suffered by patients and families during this time”.

But John Cuddihy said it was too easy for the board to talk about change. “Where are the concrete results? And if we make recommendations today, then who will be around to ensure they are implemented?” he said. This is where the Scottish government wants to step in “to make sure this never happens again”.

“What Molly said very clearly, and was recited at her funeral, was that the clinicians treated her like someone important,” he said. “When it came to the institution, they didn’t see it. And that was the most hurtful thing for Molly. She didn’t want to assign blame to any one person. She just wanted them to understand what was happening, because that allows you to make meaningful change.”