In yet another botched blood transfusion case,
six Thalassemia-affected children were taken seriously ill after being
transfused with blood at District Headquarters Hospital in Nayagarh district, India.
Similar incidents have been reported from Burla hospital and Balasore District Headquarters Hospital. Two
patients at Burla had been given HIV positive and Hepatitis B positive blood, and
a three year girl child had been given Hepatitis C blood.
In emergency rooms all over the world, whatever careful procedures are in place, giving the wrong blood to a patient who is bleeding out still happens. A 28-year-old gunshot victim in Kentucky was given 2 units of blood allocated for the patient in the next operating suite. A 23-year-old cancer patient in Houston died after she was given contaminated blood. A study out of Australia followed 3,000 transfused patients. 10 percent of them resulted in life-threatening, severe morbidity, and 8 of the patients died as a direct result of the transfusion.
India has been a mecca of “medical
cruises” as American and other patients without adequate medical coverage found
they could both vacation in India and have a hip replaced for less than the
cost of their insurance deductible at home. But in just 2 recent years, over 2,200 patients in India contracted HIV from blood transfusions.
If you are still of the mindset that your doctor knows best, you might want to educate yourself about blood medicine. You can start with a column I wrote about the safety, or rather lack thereof, of blood as medicine.
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