Health officials say storage bottles had correct medicine as they investigate possibility of dispensing mix-up
At least one child involved in a drug mix-up at a Tung Chung clinic may have been given disinfectant alcohol instead of cough syrup, a source close to the investigation said last night.
The doctor involved prescribed a transparent syrup to 31 children - instead of 50 as initially reported.
A Health Department probe of the mix-up found that four bulk bottles seized from the clinic had contained the correct cough syrup. 'Isopropyl alcohol was not detected [in those bottles],' it said.
The source said this indicated the mistake was likely to have occurred during dispensing.
'One of the scenarios we are looking into is that instead of the syrup, one or more patients were mistakenly given the alcohol,' the source said, adding both the alcohol and syrup were transparent. 'This would explain why some patients we contacted did not report any problems while several did.'