HEALTH secretary Nicola Sturgeon today rejected calls from grieving relatives for a full public inquiry into a fatal hospital bug outbreak.
She insisted the probe already announced into the Clostridium difficile outbreak at Vale of Leven hospital in Alexandria, West Dunbartonshire, will be "no holds barred.".
More than 50 people have been infected, with eight deaths directly caused by
the bug.
Ms Sturgeon yesterday announced a independent review into the outbreak to be chaired by Professor Cairns Smith of Aberdeen university.
But Michelle Stewart, whose mother-in-law Sarah McGinty, 67, died, told BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme that a review does not go far enough.
"I think there has got to be a public inquiry, so the public actually find out about this," she said.
"It has been covered up to much."
Ms Sturgeon insisted a review was the right approach to take.
"I entirely understand Michelle's point of view, I understand her strength of feeling," Ms Sturgeon said.
"I know how dreadful it is to have experience of C Difficile in the family. I have personal experience of that myself in past years.
"This is an incredibly serious issue. It's one that deserves to be treated with the utmost seriousness and that's what I'm doing.
"I do believe an independent review carried out by experts is the right way to go."
She said the findings of this review would be made public and that it had cross party support.
"It will be thorough, rigorous, it will be carried out by experts and I think its the right way to proceed.
"Let me be clear, there will be no cover up of anything that's gone wrong in the Vale of Leven."
She added: "It will be a no holds barred review."
A total of 54 people have been treated for the bug at the Vale of Leven hospital in the six months between December and June.
And 23 of those patients have died – with the infection directly responsible for eight of those deaths.
The cabinet secretary also hit back at Labour criticism over her own role in the affair.
An inquiry was already under way, according to Ms Sturgeon, by the time she was made aware of the outbreak with a "look back" exercise was also taking place.
"Some of the claims made yesterday by Labour politicians merit an apology – not to me, but to the people who have suffered through this, because it distracts attention from the real issue and that is getting to heart of what went wrong."
Labour's Margaret Curran has written to Ms Sturgeon stating that the review must look into her own conduct in the affair.
"Many people will be deeply concerned that, according to your statement, it was not until a local newspaper contacted you, on the 6th June, that you appear to have first learned that five people had died at the Vale of Leven Hospital," Ms Curran states.
"If this information was known to a local newspaper, is it not reasonable to expect that you should also have known?"
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