Czech hospital gives woman involuntary abortion after mixing up Asian patients
- The woman was due for a regular check on her pregnancy, but staff performed tissue removal surgery instead, causing her to lose her fetus
- The hospital head apologised for the ‘tragic’ mistake and blamed a language barrier as playing a role in the incident
A Prague hospital offered apologies on Thursday to a patient on whom it had performed an involuntary abortion after mixing her up with another patient last week.
One of the women came to the hospital for a regular check as she was pregnant, while the other arrived for curettage, a tissue removal procedure, which is also a method of terminating a pregnancy.
Both were Asian with a permanent residence in the Czech Republic, local media have said. Hospital staff mixed them up and performed the surgery on the pregnant patient, who lost her fetus as a result.
“Unfortunately, it was a human error, a human failure,” Jan Kvacek, head of the Bulovka hospital in Prague, told reporters on Thursday.
Kvacek said the hospital was “deeply sorry” for what he called a “tragic” mix-up and said the institution also offered psychological and legal help to the patient.