A cancer patient who died yesterday at Queen Mary Hospital was suffering from a rare fungal infection, the Hospital Authority said last night.
The woman, a 42-year old lymphoma patient, was admitted to the Queen Mary Hospital for chemotherapy on January 26. She died at 1.25am yesterday.
Tests found that she was suffering from intestinal mucormycosis. The disease is caused by spores from a group of fungi called murorales. People with low immunity are most suspectible. A spokeswoman for the authority said the woman had not died of the infection and that she showed no symptoms.
Meanwhile, two of five patients suffering the same gastrointestinal infection in the same hospital were in critical condition. One patient's condition had worsened because of his terminal cancer, while the other suffered from the complications developed after a bone marrow transplant. The conditions of two other adult bone marrow transplant patients were stable, while a paediatric patient was recovering.
The hospital disclosed on February 11 that a six-year-old leukaemia patient had died from the fungal infection. It has since suspended its bone marrow transplants and activated a series of infection controls.
On February 12, the authority said a 48-year-old male leukaemia patient who was admitted to Queen Mary on November last year died on January 1 in United Christian Hospital. He was later found have contracted the infection.
