Widow Says Husband Contracted Scabies in Hospital Before Death as Wales Battles Outbreaks

A woman from Ceredigion has spoken of her distress after her elderly husband caught scabies while being treated in hospital, an infection she believes cast a shadow over his final weeks and may have contributed to his death.

Kate Baxter's husband Paul, who was 90, suffered a stroke in December 2025 and died in June. Four months before his death, he contracted the highly contagious skin infestation at Glangwili Hospital in Carmarthen, run by Hywel Dda University Health Board.

Because of the infection, Kate was required to wear protective gloves and other equipment whenever she visited him — meaning that after more than 40 years of marriage, she could not even hold his hand without a barrier between them. She described the experience of touching her dying husband only through rubber gloves as deeply upsetting.

Paul's death certificate records crusted scabies as a secondary cause of death. Kate said he also developed pneumonia, but believes the severe form of the infestation weakened his immune system and left him less able to fight the lung infection. She said that had he not caught scabies, his body might have been strong enough to resist the pneumonia that ultimately killed him.

Scabies is caused by microscopic mites that burrow beneath the skin, and it spreads through close physical contact. The crusted form of the disease, which Paul developed, is far more severe: people with it can carry as many as two million mites and eggs on their bodies at any one time, according to the source account.

Kate described her husband's physical suffering in stark terms, recalling that he complained his back was itching and that when she rubbed it, his skin came away like sand. By February 2026, he had begun telling staff he felt itchy, but Kate said doctors initially suspected an allergic reaction to medication rather than scabies. She said it took 12 weeks and six days before he was formally diagnosed in May — by which point the condition had progressed to crusted scabies.

The delay is central to Kate's complaint. After Paul's death, she wrote to Hywel Dda health board to ask why it had taken so long to identify the infection. In his reply, health board chief executive Phil Kloer said the board had found no evidence that concerns about the rash had been ignored, nor that there had been a failure to seek appropriate medical review. He added that the board could not determine with certainty whether the rash could have been prevented.

Kate said she was dissatisfied with that response, arguing that it glossed over the issues she raised. In her view, doctors should have recognised sooner that they were dealing with something more than an ordinary skin condition. The correspondence highlights a broader tension between families seeking accountability and health boards assessing their own handling of outbreaks.

The impact was not limited to Paul. Kate also caught scabies from her husband and described the experience as dreadful. She spoke of an unrelenting itch that could not be relieved, constant soreness of the skin, and sharp stabbing pains in her legs and back. The discomfort was worst at night, she said, because that is when the mites are most active. She called the whole experience distressing.

Kate also recounted a detail from the aftermath of Paul's death that compounded her sense of shock: she said the undertaker told her that a tag reading "environmental hazard" had been attached to her husband's body while it lay in the morgue, indicating that the mites were still active on him. She said she never expected that a man admitted to hospital with one illness would leave through the morgue labelled as a health hazard.

Before his stroke and hospital admission, Kate remembered her husband as bright, funny and curious, a man with an inquiring mind even in his later years who was good company and enjoyed life. She said the infection took away the quality of the time they had left together.

Paul's case is not isolated. Glangwili Hospital's Steffan ward was closed in July 2026 to deal with a scabies outbreak, and the Cadog ward was shut in September. Both have since reopened, but the Teifi ward has remained closed since 21 September. This week, Hywel Dda also closed two wards at Prince Philip Hospital in Llanelli because of scabies, underlining how difficult the condition has become to contain in healthcare settings.

The health board has said it is taking additional measures to control the spread of scabies and is focused on keeping hospitals and other healthcare facilities as clean as possible. It confirmed that some treatments had been cancelled because of the ward closures, and said anyone affected would be contacted proactively as soon as it became clear that a scheduled appointment might need to change. Director of public health Ardiana Gjini said the board was working in partnership with other agencies, including Public Health Wales.

The outbreak comes amid a marked rise in scabies across Wales. The most recently published data shows more than 27,000 consultations for the condition through the Common Ailments Service last year, compared with 4,810 two years earlier — an increase of more than fivefold. That surge places additional pressure on hospitals and community services already coping with the logistical demands of isolation, contact tracing and treating those exposed.

For Kate, the statistics and the ward closures are secondary to what happened to her husband. She believes the infection robbed Paul of dignity in his final days and deprived the couple of the closeness they might otherwise have shared. She wants the health board to acknowledge that opportunities to diagnose him earlier were missed. Hywel Dda, for its part, maintains that it has found no evidence of ignored concerns or a failure to seek appropriate medical review, and says it is focused on controlling the current outbreaks and keeping patients and staff safe.