Hospital Infection Lawsuit Filed After Mold Exposure During Renovations Causes 3 Children to Die

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The families of three children with cancer who died after developing fungal infections in the hospital, have filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Florida that alleges renovations being performed at the facility during the months before the children died, stirred up the mold that caused their infections.

The hospital infection lawsuit was filed in Hillsborough County Circuit Court in Tampa, Florida against St. Joseph’s Hospital. It was filed by the families of a 5 year old who died on April 16, 2008, a 2 year old who died on May 3, 2008 and a 9 year old who died on May 13, 2008.

According to the Tampa Bay Tribune, all three children had been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which is a cancer of the white blood cells. While one of the patients was still fighting the disease, the other two had gone into remission before they developed the fungal infection.

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The children were patients at the pediatric oncology ward on the second floor at the Clyde Perry Cancer Institute of St. Joseph’s while renovations were being done between January and March 2008. The hospital was expanding their outpatient area on the floor below the children’s rooms.

The air conditioning system could have brought dust particles into their rooms and the lawsuit indicates that the children were sometimes transported right through the area undergoing construction.

The wrongful death infection lawsuit alleges that the hospital failed to properly seal off the area undergoing renovations and which exposed the children to harmful airborne pathogenic fungi from moderate to high dust levels.

The children were already in a weakened condition due to the underlying cancer, and the families claim that this made the children more susceptible to fungal infections.

Tags: Florida, Hospital Infection, Infection, Wrongful Death
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3 Comments

  1. Evan

    This is a serious concern for a lot of hospitals. Although many facilities have cut down on expansions due to the economic climate, all of them are still doing renovations. Even minor fixes require extensive involvement with infection control to avoid this kind of situation. There is a post on this site (http://blogs.hcpro.com/osha/2009/02/hospital-renovations-cited-in-lawsuit/) addressing this infection control concern, including links to a live audio this month about infection control during renovations.

  2. Hope

    my baby died nov 9/09 from a flesh eating bacteria and he was a patient in the hospital, he was in the hospital continually since may/09 and he got the infection in his penis, how could this have happened? my questions have never been answered and they have ignored my phone calls, they are hoping i will go away. my baby also has ALL and he was ok until a week up to his death and i kept telling them he was fevered and not himself but they kept pooh pooh me , he’ll get some tyleol and it will help, my baby died and i am devastated, please some one i need some advice…i know i live in canada so who can i see or talk to?

  3. Stephen

    Hospital aquired infections (nosocomial infections) secondary to secondary to poorly contained renovation/construction projects are unfortunately not uncommon. The reason is simple….money. This is not a criticism…it is an unfortunate fact.

    Having an expert (such as a Certified Industrial Hygienist) participate in the planning of projects, evaluation of containment barriers,advising on proper work practices, and conduct air monitoring to ensure the continued integrity of dust containment barriers costs money that was not even considered when many projects were conceived 4,6,and even 10 years previously.

    As late as a couple of years ago, I was still seeing “forgive our dust” signs in a number of fine hospitals. Thankfully, this practice is now on the decline…but it used to be extremely common in the eighties, nineties, and even 2000(s). I suspect that the main reason that this practice is on the decline is because of more news about the deviatating effects on patients with compromised immune status that hospital construction/renovation dust can have. Another reason is that news about lawsuits have been filtering into more and more hospital adiminstrators and infection control offices.

    Most of these types of hospital aquired infections can be prevented. But a note of caution is important here: unqualified asbestos remediators and environmental “scientists” are comming out of the woodwork and some are happy to mislead hospital staff about what they can and cannot do with regard to mold.

    I have assisted a number of health care facilities and hospitals combat nosocomial infections and while it does cost precious hospital funding…perhaps funding that was not planned for when the project was conceived…it is much better to protect patients on the front end than to pay lawyers and plaintiffs on the back end.

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