A costly mistake. A Prague hospital apologized on Thursday to a patient on whom it performed an accidental abortion last week after confusing her with another.
Both patients are of Asian origin and permanent residents of the Czech Republic, local media reported. Hospital staff confused them and performed the procedure on the pregnant patient, who lost her fetus.
One of the women, who was pregnant, had come to the hospital for a regular check-up, while the other had come for a curettage, a tissue removal procedure, which is also a method of terminating a pregnancy.
A “tragic” confusion
“Unfortunately, this is a human error, a human failure,” Jan Kvacek, director of Prague’s Bulovka Hospital, told reporters on Thursday. He stressed that the hospital was “deeply sorry” for what he called a “tragic” mix-up and said the institution had offered psychological and legal assistance to the patient. “She undoubtedly has the right to receive compensation,” he added, believing that the language barrier played a role in the incident.
Michal Zikan, head of the hospital’s obstetrics and gynecology department, said the patient signed a document in Czech which, however, concerned the other patient. “Three days earlier, the patient was informed in detail, in the presence of an interpreter, of what she was going to undergo, that it was simply a check-up,” Michal Zikan told reporters. He added that the surgeons had “no reason to believe that they were dealing with a different patient.”
Internal sanctions
The hospital suspended one employee and ordered another to work under expert supervision. For their part, the police indicated that criminal proceedings for “bodily injury through negligence” had been launched. The medical staff could be sentenced to prison and the hospital will certainly have to compensate the victim, especially if she can no longer hope for pregnancy. “However, no one can replace the loss suffered by the mother with financial means,” said Czech Health Secretary Kamal Farhan.
This case resembles that of Thi-Nho Vo, a French woman of Vietnamese origin who lost her baby in 1991 following a similar error in Lyon. Thi-Nho Vo filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights, claiming that the hospital had committed manslaughter. But the Court ruled in 2003 that involuntary abortion of a fetus did not constitute involuntary manslaughter, setting a precedent.