A close scrutiny of claims and counter-claims in the saga of use of expired medicine at Gandhi Hospital reveals the issue is shrouded in mystery.
After about a dozen children experienced unexpected symptoms including fever, chills and vomiting on Saturday allegedly after nurses administered antibiotics, parents claimed they seized ampoules containing expired medication from the nursing station.
They alleged it was administration of these medications that caused unintended reactions. The hospital flatly denied the allegations, maintaining that the expired vials did not come from its stores as they did not have a label certifying supply by Telangana Government.
The administration further alleged that the vials came from outside and were brought in to malign the hospital. To prove their point, they flashed a vial from the hospital’s store and one submitted by the parents, to show their vial had label. However, officials did not notice that the vial containing Pheniramine Maleate (commonly known as Avil) that parents had submitted, also contained the label.
Parents claimed to have seized from the hospital Avil and magnesium sulphate. Both these drugs are not antibiotics and also not part of the routine medication administered to the children, as the medication schedule in the wards show.
“The syringes are not filled before us but they are loaded at the nursing station and later given in the wards,” one parent told The Hindu , indicating that she cannot be sure if the expired medicines were indeed administered to the children. However, several parents of the affected children narrated that they found expired ampoules in trays of nursing station.
When this reporter examined the tray of medicines adjacent to the nursing station in the paediatric ward from where the parents claimed to have lifted the expired drugs, drugs were found to be valid but a few did not have the TS Supply Label.
A government doctor later explained that a hospital can procure medicines from the market on ‘buy and supply’ basis if the Government is not able to supply it.
The medication Avil, used to treat allergic reactions, was in fact administered to the children after they developed such reactions, which the hospital attributed to antibiotics. Magnesium sulphate on the other hand too did not find a place on the medication schedule of the wards. Paediatricians confess that it is rarely used for paediatric purposes.
What is also intriguing about the hospital’s claims is that most of the children had several rounds of antibiotics before experiencing unforeseen symptoms on Saturday.
Allergies usually show after a test dose, a limited dose to specifically test for allergy, is administered before actual treatment with a drug. That notwithstanding, Gandhi Hospital doctors maintained that a cumulative allergic reaction at a later time after administration of several doses cannot be ruled out.
However, they could not explain the small odds of multiple children suffering allergic reactions on the same day due to antibiotics.
An enquiry instituted by the State Government with a two-member team of external doctors, who visited the hospital on Monday, is expected to clarify these seeming inconsistencies.
