Advertisement
A brief history of Hong Kong’s medical blunders
As the city faces a new medical mistake, we look at similar issues since shortly after the handover
Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
A mistake at Tuen Mun Hospital involving a machine that analyzes liver enzymes has affected some 4,000 mostly elderly patients. It won’t be the first large-scale medical blunder in Hong Kong though.
What follows is a brief summary of some of the higher-profile medical mistakes and blunders seen in the city since shortly after the handover.
In 1998, two people were wrongly injected with undiluted potassium chloride, a drug that’s given in large doses to stop the heart during executions by lethal injection. Those cases happened within two weeks of each other. An 89-year-old man died, and a baby boy lived.
Advertisement
According to pharmacologist and medical writer David Kroll in Forbes, “if given alone without the other drugs (used in lethal injection) the high concentration of potassium chloride would be terribly painful, akin to fire or electricity coursing through the veins.”
There were 519 medical errors in the first six months of 1998. At the time, a Hospital Authority spokesman said that hospitals had started a programme to report incidents and monitor medical quality.
Advertisement
Jump forward to 2003, the year of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak in Hong Kong. More than 80 people were misdiagnosed with Sars and given a steroid treatment linked to serious bone degeneration. This all came out when senior Hospital Authority official Daisy Dai Siu-kwan went before the Legislative Council’s health services panel in November 2003.
Advertisement
Select Voice
Select Speed
1.00x