Formula milk injected into baby: Chinese court orders fresh probe into hospital blunder which left newborn with serious long-term health problems
- A court in China has ordered a new investigation into why formula milk was mistakenly injected into a newborn baby
- The boy’s mother has waged a long legal battle on behalf of her son and believes the blunder, and its aftermath, amounts to a criminal offence
A court in China has ordered a fresh investigation into a hospital and its staff after a 23-day-old baby boy was mistakenly injected with formula milk, causing him serious health and developmental problems.
The ongoing legal case attracted fresh interest on mainland social media this week after a court in eastern China’s Jiangsu province ordered the local health authority to revoke penalties previously imposed on the hospital and staff and conduct a more thorough investigation, the Huashang News reported.
The baby was born prematurely on May 10, 2020, and was placed in an incubator at the Nanjing Children’s Hospital.
On June 1, a nurse, surnamed Yan, mistakenly connected a tube for feeding formula milk through the nose to an intravenous tube attached to a vein on the baby’s scalp.
The report said the mistake was discovered half an hour later by another nurse. By then, around 10ml of formula had been injected into the baby.
In the immediate aftermath of the incident, the management of the hospital told the baby’s mother, surnamed Liu, that her son needed to be transferred to the neonatal intensive care unit because he was suffering from a serious case of pneumonia.
