Wrong product packed with vials of anaesthetic

A bottle of sodium chloride solution was wrongly packed with bottles of injectable anaesthetic for Queen Mary Hospital, prompting a retail-level recall by Pfizer in the latest in a string of drug blunders in the city.

Pfizer Corporation Hong Kong announced a voluntary recall of a batch of Lignocaine HCl Injection 1% - batch number DW21 and registration number HK-46784. The product is a local anaesthetic commonly used for minor surgical procedures.

On Monday, Queen Mary Hospital found a correctly labelled bottle of Sodium Chloride Intravenous Infusion 0.9% wrongly shrink-wrapped with nine bottles of Lignocaine HCl Injection. The Department of Health said the batch in question, with a total of 5,890 bottles, was manufactured and packed in Australia.

It was imported to Hong Kong in November last year and 5,096 bottles had been supplied to 15 Hospital Authority hospitals, private hospitals and private doctors.

The department's pharmaceutical service inspected Pfizer and another two wholesalers of the product, Zuellig Pharma and Primal Chemical, and had not detected any irregularities.

The department said it had warned doctors to stop using the product from the batch concerned. It said it was closely monitoring the recall by Pfizer.