Hospital trusts named after sandwiches kill five (original) (raw)

All hospitals where patients have died from poisoning after eating sandwiches were identified yesterday.

Five people have died and four been left seriously unwell after an outbreak of listeria caused by packaged chicken sandwiches at groups of NHS trust hospitals. Public Health England named University Hospitals of Derby and Burton and University Hospitals of Leicester as places where patients had died.

Western Sussex Hospitals, the Frimley Health NHS Foundation and the East Kent Hospitals University trust had patients who became unwell.

The health agency had previously identified only the Manchester University trust, where two patients died, and the Aintree University Hospital trust as having suffered fatalities.

The infected food in the outbreak was provided by the Good Food Chain based in Staffordshire, which supplies 43 NHS trusts and one private hospital. The chicken was supplied by North Country Cooked Meats in Salford, Greater Manchester. The Good Food Chain has since ceased production.

Last night it emerged that the Food Standards Agency endorsed advice given to hospitals in 2012 not to give ready-made sandwiches to vulnerable patients over food poisoning risks but relaxed its advice four years later.

• A health and social care minister collapsed at the dispatch box in the House of Lords yesterday as she answered a question on the listeria outbreak. Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford, 39, appeared to faint and was tended to by several peers with medical backgrounds before being helped to her feet.