Widower from Winnersh settles case over wife’s insect bite death

The husband of a woman who died more than a year after an insect bite became infected has settled a case with clinicians who he said missed opportunities to escalate her treatment.

Mandy Weaver, from Winnersh, died aged 48 in October 2018, having suffered with increasingly severe wounds after being bitten on the leg in summer 2017.

Her husband Mark, now 54, said she had repeatedly attended the Westfield Road Surgery in Winnersh as her condition deteriorated.

The surgery was approached to comment.

A law firm that helped Mark bring a clinical negligence claim against some of the surgery’s clinicians said the case had been settled, but without any admission of liability or an apology.

Within weeks of being bitten, Mandy’s wound had started to leak and ooze.

Her husband said she had attended the surgery and a nurse diagnosed an infection, dressed her leg and prescribed antibiotics.

Over the coming months, she attended the surgery repeatedly for treatment, but the wound never properly healed, despite periods of improvement, and soon both legs were infected.

Mark said he became increasingly concerned and by January 2018 her legs were leaking so heavily that fluid would pool on the floor when she stood up.

Just days before she was due to attend an appointment with a tissue viability nurse in October 2018, she was found collapsed at home.

A coroner concluded she had died after deep vein thrombosis caused a pulmonary embolism.