THE daughter of a Waterside woman who died after contracting C. difficile in Altnagelvin hospital has slammed hospital procedures she says keeps patients in the dark about the danger of contamination.
Eighty-six-year-old Dorothy Wray, of Kimberley Hill in the Lisnagelvin area, passed away at the hospital in February, six months after she was admitted following a fall.
Her daughter, Jennifer Balmer, feels the hospital must do more to isolate patie
nts and inform patients.
"We've waited this long to speak because the experience is still very raw for us," she said.
"My mother was 86 and she was a good age but she had a horrible death. She died of bronchial pneumonia but the geriatric consultant said that C. difficile contributed to her death. He wasn't trying to hide anything but we had the impression the hospital were not informing people properly.
"The nurses did their best and they were very good. I know they were very fond of my mother, they called her a wee dote, she had a small frame and she was always smiling."
Mrs Balmer says some of the hospital doctors were dismissive of family concerns and her mother was not isolated from other patients. She was given her mother's clothes in bags after her death and used gloves to handle them on her own initiative, later discovering the clothing should have been burned.
"Heaven knows how many people in the hospital have the infection, other people on the ward didn't know she had it and that isn't right. People need to be aware and that is why we're doing this, to alert people."
The Department of Health's website advises that patients with the condition can contaminate the general environment around them with the bacterium. It recommends isolation of patients with C. difficile diarrhoea and good infection control nursing.
Alan Corry-Finn, Infection Control boss for the Western Health and Social Care Trust, said the trust put a high priority on infection control.
"Respecting patient confidentiality the Trust cannot comment on individual cases," he said.
"In relation to Clostridium Difficile, action taken when patients are diagnosed with the infection includes administering appropriate treatment for the patients in isolation or in cohort bays, which is in keeping with nationally agreed infection prevention and control measures.
"In relation to isolation capacity, the Trust is challenged in relation to the age of its hospital facilities."
The full article contains 429 words and appears in Londonderry Sentinel newspaper.
