Louise Slorance accused NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde was continuing to “gamble with people’s lives” after refusing to upgrade a super hospital’s ventilation system.
14:14, 23 Jan 2026Updated 14:22, 23 Jan 2026
Louise Slorance said NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde was “gambling with people’s lives”(Image: Callum Moffat/Daily Record)
The widow of a Scottish Government official who died at a scandal-hit super hospital has refused to accept an apology from NHS bosses.
Louise Slorance said her husband Andrew “was a dead man walking” when he was transferred to a general ward at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) while undergoing complex treatment for blood cancer.
In a powerful statement published today, the grieving mum accused NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHS GCC) of continuing to “gamble with people’s lives”.
She spoke out days after the embattled health board was forced to admit to a public inquiry its £1 billion hospital had opened too early, and some infections at the site were likely to be caused by contaminated water.
Andrew, a dad-of-five who died aged 49, had gone into hospital in October 2020 for a stem cell transplant and chemotherapy after being diagnosed with mantle cell lymphoma.
He died six weeks after being admitted – with the official cause of death listed as “Covid pneumonia”.
When she requested his medical notes after his death, she found he had also been treated for a fungus called aspergillus, which had not previously been disclosed to her.
In a statement published today, Louise said: “After a decade, we are at a critical and dangerous juncture in the story of the QEUH infection scandal with NHS GCC accepting carefully chosen and narrowly focused failures to admit to. I do not accept the GGC apology, an apology only provided through their lawyers in a public setting. I do not believe they have accepted all the fatal failures at the hospital.
“Andrew’s fatal infections, and that of Tony, were acquired in the 1100-bed adult hospital as a result of a substandard ventilation system.
“Andrew entered the QEUH free of cancer, fit and healthy but requiring one of the most high risk treatments offered to blood cancer patients to prolong his life. They would purposely destroy his immune system to allow his body to accept the new life saving immune system that the most generous of strangers had donated. Andrew trusted them with his life and trusted the hospital implicitly. This unquestioning trust would cost him his life.
Andrew Slorance (Image: )
“At his most vulnerable Andrew contracted Covid, an airborne virus, within days of entering the hospital. The sub-standard ventiliation no doubt being the key factor in his Covid diagnosis. Alone, he tried to keep strong, while unknowingly he breathed in the fatal aspergillus spores circulating in his protective environment.
“With no immune system they moved him to a general ward, he was a dead man walking. Sitting 50 miles away, unable to visit, I was oblivious.
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“As he died, no would tell me about the deadly fungal infection they had two positive tests for. Immediately following his death, GCC told me: “A post mortem wouldn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know”. It would have told me he had aspergillus.
“Over five years has gone past, GCC have never admitted Andrew contracted invasive aspergillus, instead choosing to use vital health money to spy on me and undermine the truths I told.
“The truth is the entire ventilation system, as agreed by GCC, fails patients. The UK’s largest hospital has a 1970s standard of ventilation system, unfit for modern healthcare. This cannot and does not keep vulnerable adult patients safe. The chief executive told the inquiry there were no plans to change this. For the sake of money and reputation, they will continue to gamble with people’s lives.
“We cannot allow GCC to deflect from the unmanaged and deadly risk. All lives matter.”
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