Widow Says Husband Caught Scabies in Hospital and Died With Skin Condition Listed as Secondary Cause

A grieving widow has described how her husband of more than four decades contracted scabies while being treated in hospital, leaving him in distress during his final weeks and forcing her to wear protective gloves simply to hold his hand.

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

Crusted scabies is recorded as a secondary cause of death on Paul's death certificate. Scabies is caused by microscopic mites that burrow beneath the skin and spreads through close skin-to-skin contact.

Kate, who lives in Cwrt Newydd in Ceredigion, said the infection took a heavy toll on her husband. "He was suffering. He said to me, 'my back itches' and when I rubbed his back, his skin was coming off like sand," she said. "To have him die like that wasn't good."

She recounted that Paul also developed pneumonia, but believes the crusted scabies weakened his immune system and left him less able to fight the infection. In her view, the skin condition cast a shadow over their final weeks together and robbed them of the quality of the time they had left.

The severity of Paul's case was compounded by a long delay in diagnosis. According to Kate, he first mentioned feeling itchy in February, but doctors initially suspected an allergic reaction to medication. She said it took 12 weeks and six days before he was diagnosed in May, by which point the condition had progressed to crusted scabies, the most severe form of the disease, in which a person can carry as many as two million mites and eggs.

Kate also contracted scabies from her husband and described the experience as dreadful. She said the itching was relentless and impossible to relieve, with the skin in constant pain. The mites were worse at night, she added, when they are most active, producing sudden sharp stabbing pains in her leg or back that seemed to multiply. She called the experience distressing.

Because of the infection, Kate was issued personal protective equipment similar to that used by medical staff during the Covid pandemic whenever she visited her husband in hospital. She said being unable to touch him without gloves was a painful indignity at the end of his life. "Holding somebody's hand with gloves is not good," she said.

Her account also extends beyond the hospital ward. Kate said the undertaker told her that Paul's body carried a tag reading "environmental hazard" while it lay in the morgue, indicating the scabies were still active on him. She said she never expected her husband to go into hospital with one condition and leave through the morgue as a health hazard.

Before his admission, Kate remembered Paul as a vibrant presence. She described him as very bright, funny and curious, with an inquiring mind even in old age. He enjoyed life and was great to be around, she said.

After his death, Kate wrote to Hywel Dda health board to complain about the length of time it took to diagnose the scabies. In his reply, the board's chief executive, Phil Kloer, said the health board had not found any evidence that concerns about the rash were ignored or that there was a failure to seek 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 unhappy with that response and felt the health board had skated over the issues. In her view, doctors should have realised sooner that they were dealing with more than a simple skin condition.

The case comes amid a wider pattern of scabies outbreaks in the region. In July, the Steffan ward at Glangwili Hospital was closed to treat an outbreak, followed by the Cadog ward in September; both have since reopened. The Teifi ward has been shut since 21 September, and this week the health board also closed two wards at Prince Philip Hospital in Llanelli because of scabies.

The health board said it was taking extra measures to control the spread of scabies and was focused on keeping hospitals and healthcare settings 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 be changed.

Ardiana Gjini, the board's director of public health, said the board was working in partnership with other agencies, including Public Health Wales. The BBC said her statement was cut off at that point in the source material.

Figures published for Wales underline how quickly the problem has grown. Data shows there were more than 27,000 reported consultations through the Common Ailments Service for the condition last year, compared with 4,810 two years earlier — a rise of more than fivefold.

For Kate, those statistics are inseparable from the personal loss she has described. She believes that had her husband not contracted scabies, his immune system might not have been compromised and he might have been able to fight off the pneumonia that ultimately contributed to his death. Her complaint to the health board remains a point of contention, with the board saying it found no evidence of ignored concerns while she insists the warning signs were missed for too long.