A MUM-of-two ended up seriously ill in hospital after catching a parasitic bug which has been traced to the Waterfront Leisure Centre swimming pool.
She is one of seven people known to have caught the Cryptosporidium bug after swimming at the centre in early September.
Now Stephanie Sim, 32, is suing Inverclyde Leisure, who operate the pool.
Solicitor Patrick McGuire, of Thompsons, who has handled other high profile cases of this kind, is pursuing Stephanie’s case and today raised concerns about the situation.
Ms Sim’s illness follows that of toddler Zac Campbell, who recently featured in the Tele with his mum Bianca, both inset, and also went swimming at the pool on the same day.
Stephanie, who took her 10-year-old son and two-year-old daughter Kendal, all pictured far right, to the busy Greenock pool, said: “My son Daryl was the first to fall ill.
“He was sent home from school the next day and had to stay away from football training.”
A couple of weeks later, after caring for her sick children, Stephanie fell violently ill.
She said: “I was feeling worse and worse so I ended up going to A&E.
“I was having sweats, I was flushed, going from warm to cold. 
“I thought I was dying.
“I was rushed to another hospital and they admitted me to a ward.
“They tested me for everything, including HIV.
“It turned out it was Cryptosporidium.
“I was put into isolation.  I couldn’t see my children or anyone.
“I was so ill and I thought I was going off my head for five days.
“I lost two stone — I was nine-and-a-half stone and I am now seven-and-a-half.
“I am only starting to recover now.
“When I was leaving, the doctor who saw me said that he couldn’t believe how unwell I was when I first came into the hospital.”
As Stephanie works in the food delivery industry she has been unable to go back to her job since for fear of contamination.
She added: “It has been really, really tough for us all.”
She was contacted by both NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde public health and environmental health officers who investigated the source.
They confirmed to her that they had a number of cases linked to the Waterfront.
Greenock mum Bianca Johnson, pictured, says she has also been told by environmental health that her 19-month-old son Zac caught the bug from the pool.
Bianca and her mum Barbara had taken her three children to the pool on September 5, the same day as Stephanie and her two children were there.
She said: “I was told in a phone call last week that there was ‘an episode’ — somebody had had an accident in the pool and it was not reported to them.
“They didn’t know about it quickly enough.
“But what did they do, did they empty the pool and clean it?
“I am very angry about this. My son has been ill for a week.
“When my mum contacted the Waterfront initially they said that it was tested four times a day and there wasn’t a problem.
“They never even got back to her.”
Separately, another mum from Inverclyde has contacted Bianca to say that her son had the bug after swimming in the pool on the same day.
One of her mum’s neighbours had also been confirmed with the bug, because she had been in close contact with Zac before they realised what was wrong.
Solicitor Patrick McGuire, who is acting for Stephanie Sim, said: “The law in Scotland is very strong on this.
“We have a mum who was very seriously ill indeed.
“I also have real concerns about what happened with regards to public health. Why were people not alerted?
“This is a serious public health issue.
“They should have put something out there so that people could be tracked down and alerted to it and get the help they needed.
“This violent bug spreads very quickly.”
A spokeswoman for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board today confirmed the cases.
She said: “We investigated a small cluster of seven cases of Cryptosporidiosis, where the people attended the same swimming pool in the first half of September, or were close contacts of those cases.
“The investigations are now concluded and there is no indication that anybody who has attended the pool since has been affected by the bug.
“While we cannot comment on individual cases, Cryptosporidium is not uncommon and in 2015, Health Protection Scotland received 723 laboratory reports of this.”
An Inverclyde Council environmental health spokesman said: “We have carried out a thorough inspection of the pool and are satisfied the water treatment system and processes in place are robust and functioning as they are intended. 
“This would appear to be an isolated outbreak connected with a single point source and we have no concerns about the quality of the pool water at the Waterfront Leisure Centre.”
Inverclyde Leisure’s head of leisure and community services David McCorkindale said: “Inverclyde Council in conjunction with the health board have now concluded their investigation, with the outcome being that no further action is required by Inverclyde Leisure and there is no risk to bathers.”