The death of 10-year-old Milly Main in August 2017 was the first to hit the headlines when concerns about the safety of the hospital become public two years later.
Milly had been treated for leukaemia since the age of five, and in the summer of 2017 she had a successful stem cell transplant at the Royal Hospital for Children’, part of the QEUH campus.
A short time later, her Hickman Line, a tube used to administer drugs, became infected with stenotrophomonas maltophilia bacteria, often linked to contaminated water systems. She developed toxic shock and died.
The bacterial infection was listed as a possible contributing factor on her death certificate.
An independent review later concluded the infection was “probably related to the hospital environment”.
The following year, cancer wards at the children’s hospital were closed for an £8.9m upgrade to the water and ventilation systems.
But NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde maintained it was not possible to say with certainty where Milly’s infection originated as the water was not being tested at the time.
The health board’s recent admission that defects in the water system probably caused some infections among child cancer patients between 2016 and 2018 does not address individual cases.