{"id":788020,"date":"2026-10-01T01:28:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T01:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/788020\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T01:28:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T01:28:08","slug":"ceredigion-man-who-died-with-scabies-dubbed-environmental-hazard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/788020\/","title":{"rendered":"Ceredigion man who died with scabies dubbed environmental hazard"},"content":{"rendered":"

As her husband of more than 40 years lay dying in a hospital bed, Kate Baxter was not even allowed to hold his hand without wearing protective gloves.<\/p>\n

Paul suffered a stroke in December 2025 and, four months before he died in June aged 90, caught scabies in hospital.<\/p>\n

In his final days, Kate could only touch him while wearing the rubber gloves after he contracted the highly contagious skin infestation, external<\/a> at Glangwili Hospital, Carmarthen.<\/p>\n

Hywel Dda health board said it was taking extra measures to control the spread of scabies and was focused on keeping hospitals and healthcare settings as clean as possible.<\/p>\n

“He was suffering. He said to me, ‘my back itches’ and when I rubbed his back, his skin was coming off like sand,” she said.<\/p>\n

“To have him die like that wasn’t good.”<\/p>\n

Scabies is caused by microscopic mites burrowing under the skin and it spreads through close skin contact.<\/p>\n

Kate, from Cwrt Newydd in Ceredigion, said Paul also had pneumonia, but the crusted scabies meant his immune system “had weakened”.<\/p>\n

Paul died on 8 June – scabies is noted as a secondary cause of death on his death certificate.<\/p>\n

Kate said the undertaker told her Paul had a tag on him saying “environmental hazard” while his body was in the morgue.<\/p>\n

“It means the scabies were still active on him,” she added.<\/p>\n

“You don’t expect your husband to go into hospital with one thing and then come out via the morgue as a health hazard.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As her husband of more than 40 years lay dying in a hospital bed, Kate Baxter was not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-788020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}