Legionnaire's disease blamed for TV chef Ross Burden's death
TV chef Ross Burden died of Legionnaires' disease due to an infected water supply at a hospital in Auckland, New Zealand, it has emerged.
The chef, who appeared on Ready Steady Cook, was previously reported to have died of cancer in July aged 45, having received treatment for leukaemia.
But an interim coroner's report published in New Zealand's Sunday Star Times, stated that the disease, which is an acute form of pneumonia caused by breathing in water droplets caused by the legionella pneumophila bacteria, common in lakes and rivers.
Burden's birth mother Jude Harwood, a former nurse, said he had been doing well after a successful bone marrow transplant for his leukaemia. But he was then diagnosed with standard pneumonia and given a nebuliser to help him breathe. However friends who visited him noticed that the nebuliser was being filled from the tap, rather than with sterile water. Harwood was reported as saying that she believe this was the cause of the Legionella infection.
Meanwhile his adoptive mother, Anne Burden, of Hastings, said she had been contacted by the hospital and told Legionella had been detected in the water system.
