Widow Says Husband Caught Scabies in Hospital and Died With Skin Condition Listed on Death Certificate

A widow has described how her husband's final weeks were overshadowed by a scabies infection he is believed to have contracted while being treated in hospital, leaving her unable to hold his hand without wearing protective gloves.

Kate Baxter's husband Paul, who was 90, suffered a stroke in December 2025 and died in June, four months after developing the highly contagious skin infestation at Glangwili Hospital in Carmarthen. Scabies is recorded as a secondary cause of death on his death certificate.

Kate said the infection turned what should have been precious time with her husband of more than 40 years into a distressing ordeal. Because of the risk of transmission, she was required to wear personal protective equipment, similar to that used by medical staff during the Covid pandemic, whenever she visited him.

"Holding somebody's hand with gloves is not good," she said. She described how Paul's condition deteriorated and how the itching caused visible damage to his skin, recalling that when she rubbed his back his skin came away "like sand". "To have him die like that wasn't good," she added.

Scabies is caused by microscopic mites that burrow beneath the skin, and it spreads through close skin contact. In its most severe form, known as crusted scabies, a person can carry as many as two million mites and eggs. Kate said Paul had developed this more serious form of the condition by the time he was diagnosed in May.

She believes the infection compromised his immune system at a point when he was already weakened by pneumonia, and that without it he might have been able to fight off the illness. Crusted scabies is noted on his death certificate as a secondary cause of death.

According to Kate, Paul first complained of itching in February. She said doctors initially thought it might be an allergic reaction to medication, and that it took 12 weeks and six days for him to be properly diagnosed. She also contracted scabies from her husband and described the experience as dreadful, with intense itching that was worse at night and sharp, stabbing pains in her legs and back.

Kate said the infection cast a shadow over Paul's last weeks and robbed the couple of the quality of time they had together. She described him as bright, funny and possessed of an inquiring mind even at the age of 90, and said he had enjoyed life and was great to be around.

After his death, Kate wrote to Hywel Dda health board to complain about how long it had taken to diagnose her husband. In his reply, the board's chief executive Phil Kloer said no evidence had been found that concerns about the rash were ignored or that there had been a failure to seek an appropriate medical review.

He added that the health 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 board had skated over the issues, arguing that doctors should have realised sooner that the problem was not merely a skin condition.

The case comes amid a series of scabies outbreaks at hospitals in the Hywel Dda health board area. Glangwili Hospital's Steffan ward was closed in July to treat an outbreak, followed by the Cadog ward in September, and both have since reopened. The Teifi ward has remained closed since 21 September.

This week the health board also closed two wards at Prince Philip Hospital in Llanelli because of scabies. The board confirmed that some treatments had been cancelled as a result of the ward closures and said anyone affected would be contacted proactively as soon as it became clear their scheduled appointments might need to change.

Ardiana Gjini, the board's director of public health, said it was working in partnership with other agencies including Public Health Wales to control the spread of the infection, and that efforts were focused on keeping hospitals and healthcare settings as clean as possible.

The health board has previously said it was taking extra measures to manage the situation. The scale of the problem appears to be growing across Wales more widely. The latest published figures show there were more than 27,000 reported consultations for scabies through the Common Ailments Service last year, compared with 4,810 two years earlier, a rise of more than fivefold.

Kate's account raises questions about how quickly symptoms are recognised in hospital settings and about the protections in place for vulnerable patients and their families. She said she was told by an undertaker that Paul's body carried a tag reading "environmental hazard" while in the morgue, indicating the infection was still active.

"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. For Kate, the lasting memory is not only of her husband's death but of the restrictions placed on their final moments together, and she wants the health board to acknowledge what she believes were missed opportunities to act sooner.