Bermuda Hospitals Board has apologised and paid compensation to a widower whose late wife was given a substance which was the subject of public health warnings and may have contributed to her death.

Allan DeSilva has battled BHB for three years to get it to accept responsibility for injecting his wife Sylvia, a diabetic who had kidney disease, with a contrast dye containing gadolinium in 2008 at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital — despite warnings issued by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2006 and 2007.

Mrs DeSilva died on August 7, 2012, after developing nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF), which the FDA says can occur in patients with kidney disease who have an MRI scan with a gadolinium-based contrast agent and can cause death. “I want my story to be told so that this will never ever happen again to another person,” Mr DeSilva, 80, told The Royal Gazette. “My main aim is not to sue the hospital, not to take aim. It’s to make this hospital more accountable and responsible for their patients.

“Even three years after her death, I feel the effect. I still think she’s there. When I go home at night I dream about her. I think she’s calling me.”

Mrs DeSilva was given gadolinium-based dye four times for a series of MRI scans — once at KEMH in 2005 before the FDA’s warnings, twice at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and finally at KEMH on March 26, 2008. The substance is administered to give a clear view inside veins and arteries.

She was diagnosed with NSF after becoming largely bedridden and finding it painful to move her joints. The tissue beneath her arms and legs tightened and the disease attacked her eyes.

The couple went public about her debilitating illness in 2010, accusing both hospitals of ignoring the FDA warnings and urging them to pay for the best treatments possible.

There is no cure or consistently successful treatment for NSF. Mrs DeSilva’s condition worsened and she died three years ago, aged 72, leaving her husband and daughter Donna bereft.

Mr DeSilva continued to press BHB to admit it had failed his wife, asking for compensation for his loss. “To go through what we did with my family, the pain was unbearable,” he said. “To watch my wife die in the way she did, it’s unimaginable that anyone should go through that.”

The board insisted Mr DeSilva prove gadolinium played a part in his wife’s death, prompting him to find a pathologist in the US to review the autopsy carried out on her by KEMH. That doctor analysed tissue samples and found gadolinium deposits in her heart, skin, diaphragm, stomach, liver, lung and kidney.

Jerrold Abraham, professor of pathology at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY, concluded: “Gadolinium is known to be a toxic material and it has been shown experimentally to enhance fibrosis and calcification.

“Thus I am confident that Mrs DeSilva’s gadolinium exposure and NSF contributed to some extent to the worsening of her [kidney] disease and to her death.”

BHB — which insisted in 2010 that its “treatments and scans at the hospital follow best practice, evidence-based medicine” — has admitted that Mrs DeSilva appears to have developed NSF through the administration of a gadolinium-based dye, which she could not excrete because she suffered from kidney failure, and that a symptom of the NSF was calcification of her heart.

Her death certificate gives NSF as one of the causes of death, as well as calcification.

BHB’s lawyer Allan Doughty said in a letter to Mr DeSilva’s lawyer Alan Dunch in July last year: “The BHB does confirm that the advanced state of calcification in and around Mrs DeSilva’s heart significantly contributed to her death.”

He said the alleged breach of BHB’s duty of care towards Mrs DeSilva was confined to March 26, 2008, accounting for 25 per cent of her overall exposure to the dye. In March this year, Mr Doughty wrote that though BHB did not formally admit liability, it apologised and was willing to make an offer of full and final settlement.

An amount was agreed upon in May, though Mr DeSilva can’t disclose the figure due to a confidentiality agreement. It is understood to be a low six-figure sum.

“The amount of money they offered me was, to me, an insult as to what we should have gotten if we were overseas. They offered me a minuscule amount — it’s crazy. The way that the hospital treated me for three years, they sort of held me to ransom to say ‘you have to have the burden of proof’. That’s what hurt me the most, after what I had to endure with my wife.”

The widower, who was married for 52 years, set up Bermuda Healthcare Advocacy Group in 2012 in an attempt to hold the Island’s only hospital to account. The pressure group aims to raise awareness about the use of unnecessary medications and highlight cases of medical negligence.

“Because of the way the hospital treated me, it made me think does this happen all of the time,” said Mr DeSilva. “How many other people in Bermuda go through the suffering that I went through in order to get them to admit their wrongdoing?” A BHB spokeswoman said last night: “BHB can confirm it has a policy in place regarding the use of gadolinium and it was implemented in 2008, after the FDA warning.

“We have worked with Mr DeSilva regarding his wife’s experience and on the use of gadolinium, and we continue to review our policy and processes to reflect the latest evidence.

“Details around Mrs DeSilva’s experience cannot be disclosed to the media by BHB as they relate to the individual, but this information has been discussed with Mr DeSilva. We certainly feel great compassion for Mrs Sylvia DeSilva and her family, and we are sorry for the DeSilva family’s loss.”

Brigham and Women’s Hospital agreed a settlement with Mr DeSilva two years ago.