AAP:

THE head of the organisation running Melbourne nursing home Broughton Hall, where four people died over the Easter break, has denied there was an outbreak of food poisoning there.

Benetas chief executive Sharon Callister today said it was not food poisoning but gastroenteritis that struck the nursing home patients, with four dead, more hospitalised and 21 residents affected.

“This is not food poisoning. We have not got that verified,” Ms Callister told ABC radio.

“It's an outbreak of gastroenteritis and we are treating it in that sense, as I said, isolation techniques and a number of other medical interventions.

“I think to speculate if it's an outbreak of food poisoning is incorrect, and that's why I need to be very, very clear to assure people that we are treating this as a gastroenteritis outbreak.”

The denial came despite one of the hospitalised victims being diagnosed with salmonella and a Department of Human Services statement on Saturday saying the deaths were a result of food poisoning.

“We have had one resident who is in hospital diagnosed with salmonella,” Ms Callister said.

“That is the only diagnosis we have at this point in time.”

She denied Benetas nursing homes had a food poisoning problem.

“No, no, we don't have a problem. We have very strict standards that we comply with.”

Benetas runs community care programs and nursing homes across Victoria.

Meanwhile, a relative of a man who died at the nursing home over the Easter break has defended the facility.

Identifying herself as “Libby”, the woman told ABC Radio today that Broughton Hall was “a wonderful place”.

“My relative was there for many years and the care there was just wonderful, top class and we feel, I spoke to the close relatives of him yesterday when all of this came out in the paper and they said 'Well, we just thank them for the wonderful care'.”

The woman said her elderly relative had been very close to death.

“His death was expected and nobody related it very much to food poisoning at all,” she said.

“I think they were told he had a bit of gastro, but it (his death) was just expected. He'd had an episode three months before when the family had been called and then he'd rallied, so ... it was nothing more than general old age and organ decay I think.

“That is how we understood it.”