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.

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

Mr. Zoller battled cancer 20 years ago and felt healthy at the beginning of the year, his widow Dani Zoller-Bellette said, but underwent a bone marrow transplant after a routine blood test showed he had low blood cell counts. Courier mail reported.

As he recovered, Mr Zoller was encouraged to sit outside on the hospital’s garden veranda to get some fresh air, said Ms Zoller-Bellette, from Brisbane.

While she was there with him, she noticed helicopters flying overhead, stirring up the air around the garden.

‘We often sat there with him and other transplant patients. It’s on the fifth floor and there’s a bit of a wind tunnel. We sat there without masks,” Ms. Zoller-Bellette claimed.

‘We had no idea about the dangers of fungal infections. Jurgen was a medical professional and he did not know the dangers.

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

Mr Zoller, a senior radiographer, was hospitalized in February and began to deteriorate in March.

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

A spokesperson for Metro North Health offered its condolences to Mr Zoller’s family at this “excruciatingly painful time.”

The spokesman said the fungal infection that killed Zoller was unrelated to the “cluster” of similar infections that has affected five patients and killed two at Prince Charles Hospital, also in Brisbane.

“Fungi are typically found and contracted in the community and are very rarely linked to hospital-acquired infections,” he said.

“RBWH has extensive safety and infection control protocols in place. Protocols are routinely reviewed and updated to ensure patient safety. The Cancer Care Unit at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital has for many years had a 1.80 meter high glass screen protecting the outside veranda, with plants outside this screen.

‘RBWH Cancer Care has been redesigning the veranda for some time to improve the patient experience.

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

‘We have not identified a likely source of this rare fungus in 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 doesn’t want anyone else to suffer as her family has suffered these past few weeks.

Shine Advocaten 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 construction 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 however, in May he fell ill quickly after the operation and died on September 20.

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

As families demanded answers, the state’s Chief Health Officer Dr. John Gerrard said Wednesday that construction of a new parking lot at the hospital may have stirred up soil that then found its way into the transplant unit.

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

‘These fungi are found all around us in the natural environment, so it is notoriously difficult to pinpoint where individual patients are getting their infections from.’

Officials are also looking at how the hospital is cleaned as part of their investigation.