LAHORE: The drug reaction claimed the life of another patient in the Thoracic Surgery Unit of the May Hospital on Monday, creating panic among 14 other patients, since the condition of most of them is claimed that it was serious.
The incident took place on Sunday night when the staff administered injection to more than 16 patients and collapsed shortly after taking it.
According to preliminary reports, a girl who also received the shot breathed the last one within two hours after the administration of injection to her and other patients at 7 pm on Sunday.
On Monday, another patient, Doulat Khan (28) who was brought from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also died of serious complications due to the same supposedly defective drugs.
The newly appointed executive director of the CEO, Professor Haroon Hamid, confirmed that the drug reaction had gained lives of two patients so far, while the condition of others was serious. He said that the women’s female staff had injected the drug to 16 patients in the room on Sunday. It seems that the failure was not in the medication, but a solution that was added before injected to patients.
However, a three -member committee constituted shortly after the incident is investigating the drug reaction case.
A superior pharmacist, Noor Mehar, said that the worried room staff ignored the warning and precautions before administering medicines to patients.
According to the health notice issued, particularly for said medication, he said, it was suggested that solutions that contain calcium and ceftriaxone gluconate should not be mixed with the medication in the question because they could cause precipitation that could be fatal.
Mehaha declared that it was a shameless mistake that led to the unfortunate drug reaction and added that the Punjab government had already issued the alert after an advice of the Food and Medicines Administration (FDA) of America.
To a question, he claimed that the injection of antibiotics that caused a serious reaction to 16 patients and the deaths of two of them had also been administered to many patients from other rooms of the same hospital on the same day. However, this reaction was not reported in any other hospital room, he said and added that this showed that the standard guidelines issued for this particular medication were blatantly ignored in the surgical room of the hospital’s chest only.
Posted in Dawn, March 11, 2025
