Patient given wrong blood

Manav Mander

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, May 21

High drama was witnessed at Mother and Child Hospital (located at the Civil Hospital complex) today when a patient was transfused wrong blood. A patient with B+ blood was transfused A+ blood which could have proved fatal, had it not been noticed in time.

The family of the patient raised slogans against the ill-functioning of the hospital.

Lakshmi, who had given birth to a baby a few days back at Mother and Child Hospital, was today re-admitted to the hospital after she complained of weakness. She was advised blood transfusion by the doctors as her haemoglobin had come down to 4 gram.

Lakshmi’s husband Harpreet said: “I noticed my wife was falling unconscious. When I read the blood group on the packet, I found it was A+ while my wife’s blood group was B+. I raised the alarm and brought the matter to the notice of the hospital staff.”

Harpreet said his mother received the blood at the blood bank when the name of his wife was announced.

The Blood Transfusion Officer, Dr Gurinderdeep Singh Grewal, said there was confusion since there were two patients with rhyming names, Lakshmi and Rashmi. “The attendant at the blood bank called out the name of Rashmi to collect blood but Lakshmi’s mother received the blood unit as the name sounded similar. Since Lakshmi’s mother was illiterate, she did not read the blood group on the label. It was the duty of the doctor and the staff on duty to check the blood before transfusing it to a patient,” said Dr Grewal.

Dr Geeta, SMO, said it was very unfortunate that such a thing happened. “The staff should have taken care of this. I don’t want to comment further on the matter and will talk about this only after investigation is carried out by an inquiry committee. The patient was referred to the CMCH and is said to be out of danger,” said Dr Geeta.

The Director of CMCH, Dr William, said he met the patient in the evening and she was stable now.