Jurgen felt fit and healthy but underwent a transplant on doctors’ orders. Weeks later he was dead. Now his wife has a grim theory about what killed him

A transplant patient has died after contracting a fungal infection in hospital in the third death from similar circumstances in Brisbane.

Dad Jurgen Zoller, 57, died at the Royal Brisbane Women’s Hospital in April.

Mr Zoller fought off cancer 20 years ago and felt healthy at the start of the year, his widow Dani Zoller-Bellette says, but underwent a bone marrow transplant after a routine blood test found he had a low blood count, the Courier Mail reported.

While he recovered, Mr Zoller was encouraged to sit out on the hospital’s garden verandah to get some fresh air, Mrs Zoller-Bellette, from Brisbane, said.

When she was out there with him, she noticed that helicopters would fly overhead and whip up the air around the garden. 

‘We often sat out there with him and other transplant patients. It is on the fifth floor and there is a bit of a wind tunnel. We would sit out there without masks,’ Mrs Zoller-Bellette claimed.

‘We had no idea of the dangers of fungal infections. Jurgen was a medical professional and he didn’t know of the dangers.

‘There were plants out there and there was always grit and dust blowing around, he even got grit in his eye at one time.’

Mr Zoller, a senior radiographer, was admitted to the hospital in February and began to deteriorate in March.

First his toe became painful, then he developed sores on his body which became infected. Eventually his liver failed and he died in April.

A Metro North Health spokesman sent its condolences to Mr Zoller’s family at this ‘unbearably painful time’.

The spokesman said the fungal infection that killed Mr Zoller was unrelated to the ‘cluster’ of similar infections that has hit five patients, leaving two dead, at The Prince Charles Hospital, which is also in Brisbane.

‘Fungi is typically found and contracted in the community and is very uncommonly linked to hospital-acquired infection,’ he said. 

‘RBWH has extensive safety and infection control protocols. Protocols are routinely reviewed and updated to ensure patient safety. The Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital Cancer Care Unit has had a six-foot glass screen protecting the outdoor veranda area for many years, with plants external to this screen.

‘RBWH Cancer Care has been in a redesign process for the veranda for some time to enhance the patient experience.

‘All patients are encouraged and educated on infection mitigation strategies as part of infection control and their ongoing care.

‘We have not identified a likely source of this rare fungus at RBWH or related cases.’

Mrs Zoller-Bellette says her ‘future has been taken away’ and that her husband had been a ‘healthy, working man’ before the bone marrow transplant.

She does not want anyone else to suffer like her family has had to in recent weeks. 

Shine Lawyers is not investigating Mr Zoller’s case. 

The cluster of fungal infections at the separate Prince Charles Hospital may have been caused by dust from a building site, according to Queensland’s Chief Health Officer.

Dr Muhammad Hussain, 55, was given a second chance at life when he received a heart transplant in May, however he quickly fell ill after the operation and passed away on September 20.

Fellow heart transplant recipient Adam Retmock, 45, was also the victim of a fungal infection that lead to his death last Friday. 

With the families demanding answers, the state’s Chief Health Officer Dr John Gerrard said on Wednesday that the construction of a new car park at the hospital may have stirred up soil which then found its way into the transplant unit.

‘It’s certainly one of the things that’s being investigated,’ Dr Gerrard told reporters.

‘These fungi exist in the environment all around us in the natural environment, so trying to work out where individual patients get their infection from is notoriously difficult.’ 

 Officials are also looking at they way the hospital is cleaned as part of their investigations.