Family of San Sebastián cancer patient who died of mpox in hospital prepare legal action

The family of the man who died on Tuesday after contracting monkeypox (mpox) in Hospital Donostia in San Sebastián believe his death had nothing to do with the tumour for which he was admitted on 1 September for a scheduled laryngectomy.

According to them, the post-surgery period went relatively well. "He had started rehabilitation in the hospital gym and the speech therapist had told him that she would begin working with him on his speech in October," the deceased man's closest relatives told Sur.

One of them said that "two days before he started showing symptoms", they had learnt from a doctor that "he was out of danger".

This is the first person to die after contracting mpox in the Basque Country. His family were at the funeral home on Thursday, keeping vigil over the victim, when they were surprised to see his case published on Diario Sur's website. They didn't expect the news to reach the press so soon, nor to find themselves in this predicament so prematurely.

"We have to think about what to do, what actions to take," they said, although they already have an appointment with a lawyer this month. "What is clear", they said, is that the 61-year-old man "was recovering" when "he contracted monkeypox after sharing a room with an infected patient without any kind of preventative measures being taken".

In a state of grief on Thursday, the family declined to go into detail about the timeline of events during the five-plus weeks at Hospital Donostia. "We have reports with the dates," they said. In broad terms, they said that the victim had been admitted on 1 September for surgery. That day, he shared a room with patient zero, who had "a headache and a sore throat".

The two patients were together in the room for "less than a week". After the first few days of "normal" cohabitation between two patients, the healthcare workers suddenly started wearing masks. "First, an assistant did it and we thought she had a cold or Covid-19. But then we saw that the other nurses were wearing them too. They told us to stay calm. His family were wearing masks, but they didn't say anything to us," the patient's family said.

Allegedly two days later, after much insistence, they were told that their colleague had tested positive and that he had been discharged to isolate at home. The room was then disinfected.

In the following days, the man suffered some complications in the form of bleeding or infection, which, they were told, was normal for his recovery. The smallpox, however, wasn't normal.

Later, he began to suffer such a severe headache that "one night he needed morphine" and, "two or three days later, he developed spots on his forehead. He was examined by an infectious disease doctor and an internist, who saw spots on his palms. They isolated him in the infectious diseases ward, "but realised it was better to treat his throat and moved him back to the other ward".

As his condition "worsened", the man was admitted to the ICU. "Between antibiotics, antivirals, morphine and everything else, he didn't recover," the deceased's family said.

A call from Osakidetza (the Basque health service) placed the onset of mpox on 16 September, "four or five days before the symptoms appeared". The family are now among the 30 or so people vaccinated against the virus.

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