UK’s biggest hospital was nicknamed Death Star. Then things got worse

The biggest hospital in the UK was known as the Death Star before it even opened.

The Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH), with its imposing star-shaped design, rose 14 storeys high into the Glasgow skyline more than ten years ago.

But fears were raised about the building, with around 1,538 beds, long before patients arrived including over the design, functionality and capacity of the children’s wing. Documents show staff from the Royal Hospital for Children (RHC), the paediatrics wing in the QUEH complex, pleading months before the ribbon was cut: “Please listen to us … your management is lying if they are telling you that all of these decisions have been accepted and not challenged by clinicians.”

In 2015 patients began to arrive after the project was delivered on time and on budget, but safety problems quickly emerged, particularly for those with weak immunity. Less than two weeks after it opened 18 leukaemia patients were moved because of fears about air purity.

By 2019 two patients had died from an airborne disease linked to pigeon droppings and doctors had conducted a review that associated 26 patient infections to contaminated water. Among those affected was a ten-year-old leukaemia sufferer, Milly Main, who died in 2017 after contracting an infection found in water despite signs she was recovering from cancer.

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Source: The Times, 17 January 2025