HEALTH Secretary Alex Neil has said an outbreak of norovirus that shut a hospital's accident and emergency department was "unprecedented" in its scale.
People with minor injuries were told to abandon Hairmyres Hospital in East Kilbride, South Lanarkshire, and travel 15 miles to Wishaw General Hospital last week because doctors were overwhelmed by demand.
NHS Lanarkshire apologised on Saturday for the situation and said that two wards were closed and a further four were placed under restrictions because of the bug, which causes sickness and diarrhoea.
Mr Neil told the Scottish Parliament yesterday that the outbreak was "very exceptional" and that he had been working with the health board to resolve the crisis and improve access to treatment.
The outbreak left some patients struggling to get care. One 85-year-old woman, who had fractured her sternum and wrist, was told she would have to spend a night on a trolley after waiting several hours to be seen as there were no spare beds.
Mr Neil said: "We are in regular touch with NHS Lanarkshire about the very exceptional outbreak of norovirus at Hairmyres Hospital, the extent of which has led to some disruption in the provision of services.
"The outbreak at the hospital is unprecedented, and the action that has been taken by NHS Lanarkshire has focused on the safety of patients and, indeed, staff. I will ask NHS Lanarkshire to ensure that all Lanarkshire MSPs are updated as soon as possible on the situation."
Central Scotland MSP Margaret McCulloch said: "Norovirus is compounding the widespread and well-documented challenges NHS Lanarkshire already faces. This is a health board with problems recruiting consultants, an on-going crisis in A&E and now we have a norovirus outbreak on an unprecedented scale putting hospital wards at Hairmyres into lockdown.
"NHS Lanarkshire must explain what caused this outbreak, how it spread so widely and why it was not contained and they need to convince people that there are contingencies in place to deal with the huge disruption."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article