Blood blunder: hospital admits no checks made in death case

A 'communication error' resulted in a road crash victim being given four packs of the wrong blood, it was revealed last night. He died hours later.

Speaking for the first time since Saturday's blunder, Queen Mary Hospital's chief executive Dr Vivian Wong Taam Chi-woon admitted none of the medical staff had checked the blood.

'We have nothing to hide,' she said. 'The team of doctors and nurses were working under a very tight environment where a lot of things were happening at the same time.' Dr Wong added: 'One person was doing one thing, then another . . . there must have been a communication error when the blood was thought to have been checked by another person.' Tsui Wai-ming, 20, died after a transfusion in the intensive care unit using two packs each of type A and type B blood. He was type O.

Blood must be cross-checked twice before being administered. 'The procedure was not followed,' Dr Wong said, adding that because the findings were preliminary, no action had been taken against staff.

The communication failure was not an excuse, said Hospital Authority deputy director of operations Dr Ko Wing-man. 'We are just describing the actual situation so you understand the pressure our staff are working under. By no means am I using this as an excuse,' he said.

Usually blood is taken from a central bank in the hospital, but for emergencies, two packs of types A, B and O are stored in a mini-bank in the intensive care unit.

All public hospitals will now be ordered to store only type O, Dr Ko said. Type O is universally compatible.