IT is a central pillar of a strategy created to deal with Glasgow's health needs for decades to come, designed to provide care from cradle to grave for hundreds of thousands of people.

The £842 million South Glasgow University Hospital, renamed the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital this month, is the main hub of one of the biggest medical campuses in Europe and boasts features at the cutting edge of 21st Century medicine.

Yet since opening its doors in April the hospital has been dogged by problems dismissed as teething troubles by some, or signs of institutional failures by others.

Waiting times targets have been missed, leading to the Scottish Government dispatching troubleshooters to oversee improvements,while both unions and nursing leaders have voiced concerns over the mounting issues.

Patients have also hit outwith claims of "chaos" in the Accident and Emergency department during one busy weekend in May, with reports of people being left waiting for hours on trolleys in corridors.

Now cancer sufferers have been moved back to the Beatson Oncology Unit after problems with air quality temporarily rendered the department unfit for purpose a month after it opened its doors.

Dreamed up more than a decade ago when Labour were in power at Holyrood, and steered through to completion by the SNP, the EUH merges three old hospitals into one, combining services from the Southern General, the Victoria Infirmary and the Western Infirmary into the new building.

It also encompasses a new children's hospital to replace the Royal Hospital for Sick Children at Yorkhill, with separate entrances and wards for young ones in the main building although, services are now shared across the adult and children's hospital, whereas before Yorkhill had its own dedicated departments.

The transfer of services has been described as the largest ever hospital migration in the UK, but it is clear that not everything has gone smoothly.

On a bank holiday weekend in May, one woman said that the hospital was like "a war zone...after a major disaster" and that her terminally-ill husband had to wait eight hours to be admitted.

Annette Leishman said her husband, who has pneumonia, was referred by their GP to the immediate assessment unit and that when they arrived, and the reception area was "six deep" in people trying to be seen.

"The corridors were full of people on trolleys with ambulance men waiting to get them booked in, old people left in corridors and no-one acknowledging anyone because they did not know where they were going," she said.

Waiting have struggled to reach targets. In the week ending ending June 7, with 78.3 per cent of people treated in A&E inside four hours, down from 83.2 per cent the previous week and the worst of any hospital in Scotland.

This is also far lower than the government's goal of treating 95 per cent of people in four hours, with 378 cases where people waited more than four hours at the QEUH to be admitted, transferred or discharged.

Meanwhile, 48 patients had to wait more than eight hours and eight people were there for longer than 12 hours.

This is despite the hospital having 1109 beds, with each ward consisting of 28 single bedrooms with ensuite facilities and observation windows that turn opaque at the twist of a handle.

Some parents have been less than impressed with the standard of care. One complained that it now takes longer to get test results, medicines from the pharmacy and blood products sent up to her son, who has blood cancer.

Another said that the quality of food on offer was "distressing" and often cold, unhealthy and unappetising.

More than 2,800 people have backed petition urging health chiefs to remove the royal title from the hospital.