Widow Says Hospital-Acquired Scabies Robbed Her Husband of Dignity in His Final Weeks

A grieving widow has described how her husband of more than four decades was forced to endure an agonising skin infestation during his final weeks of life, after he contracted scabies while being treated in a Welsh hospital.

Kate Baxter said her late husband Paul, who was 90 when he died in June, developed the highly contagious condition following his admission to Glangwili Hospital in Carmarthen. The infection became so severe that she was required to wear protective gloves whenever she visited him — meaning she could not even hold his hand without a barrier between them during the last days of his life.

Paul, who lived with Kate in Cwrt Newydd, Ceredigion, had been admitted to hospital after suffering a stroke in December 2025. According to his widow, he first began complaining of itching in February, though medical staff initially believed the symptom might have been an allergic reaction to his medication. It would be 12 weeks and six days before a correct diagnosis was finally reached in May — by which point the infestation had progressed to crusted scabies, a far more serious form of the condition.

Scabies is caused by microscopic mites that burrow beneath the skin, triggering intense itching and irritation. It spreads primarily through close skin-to-skin contact, which makes hospital environments and other healthcare settings particularly vulnerable to outbreaks. The crusted variant, sometimes called Norwegian scabies, is the most severe form and can involve as many as two million mites and eggs on a single patient, making it significantly more transmissible than ordinary scabies.

Kate believes the delayed diagnosis had devastating consequences for her husband's health. Although Paul also developed pneumonia, she said the crusted scabies left his immune system weakened and compromised. Scabies is recorded as a secondary cause of death on his death certificate, and he died on 8 June.

The distress did not end with his death. Kate said the undertaker informed her that Paul's body had been tagged as an "environmental hazard" while it was held in the morgue, a measure indicating that the mites were still active on him. "You don't expect your husband to go into hospital with one thing and then come out via the morgue as a health hazard," she said.

Reflecting on the toll the infestation took, Kate said the illness cast what she described as a shadow over Paul's final weeks and robbed the couple of precious time together. "Holding somebody's hand with gloves is not good," she said. "He was suffering." She recalled how he once told her his back was itching, and when she rubbed it, his skin came away "like sand."

Kate also caught scabies from her husband and described the experience as dreadful, explaining that the itching was relentless and the skin remained constantly painful. She said the mites were most active at night, producing sudden sharp stabbing sensations in the legs or back that then seemed to multiply — a deeply distressing ordeal that gave her a small insight into what Paul had endured.

Before his hospital admission, Kate remembered her husband as a man who remained bright, funny, and curious even in old age. "He had an inquiring mind, even at that age. He was great to be around, he enjoyed life," she said.

Following Paul's death, Kate wrote to Hywel Dda University Health Board to complain about the length of time it took to identify the infection. In his response, health board chief executive Phil Kloer said no evidence had been found to suggest that concerns about the rash had been ignored, or that there had been a failure to seek an appropriate medical review. He added that the board was unable to determine with certainty whether the rash could have been prevented.

Kate said she was dissatisfied with that reply, arguing that the board had skated over the issues she raised. In her view, doctors should have recognised far sooner that they were dealing with something more than a simple skin complaint. The health board has since said it is taking additional measures to control the spread of scabies and is focused on keeping its hospitals and healthcare settings as clean as possible.

The case comes amid a broader rise in scabies activity across Wales. Glangwili Hospital's Steffan ward was closed in July to deal with an outbreak, followed by the Cadog ward in September. Both have since reopened. The Teifi ward, however, has remained closed since 21 September. This week, the health board also closed two wards at Prince Philip Hospital in Llanelli because of scabies.

Statistics published for Wales show more than 27,000 reported consultations through the Common Ailments Service for the condition last year, a sharp increase from 4,810 two years earlier. The figures suggest scabies is becoming an increasingly significant public health concern rather than an isolated hospital problem.

Hywel Dda confirmed that some treatments had been cancelled as a result of the ward closures, but said anyone affected would be contacted proactively as soon as it became clear that scheduled appointments might need to change. Its director of public health, Ardiana Gjini, said the board was working in partnership with other agencies, including Public Health Wales, to manage the situation.

For Kate, however, the official responses offer little comfort. She believes her husband's final chapter should have been spent in comfort and dignity, surrounded by the family who loved him, rather than in isolation and discomfort caused by an infection that could have been identified and treated far earlier. Her account raises difficult questions about infection control, timely diagnosis and the quality of end-of-life care in Welsh hospitals, questions that health officials may now face increasing pressure to answer.