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Saturday October 2, 2010
Mum : Hospital prescribed wrong dosage to child
By WONG PEK MEI
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KUALA LUMPUR: Teoh Lee Thin panicked when her 20-month-old son started sweating profusely, turned pale and cried non-stop after she gave him some medication. The 26-year-old had taken her son to the emergency clinic of a private hospital on Sept 23 at about 10pm.
The next day, she called the hospital that had prescribed three different drugs to treat Teoh Jing Teng’s fever and sore throat, for an explanation on the side-effects. She was astonished when the hospital nurse admitted that the dosage for the antibiotics prescribed was wrong.
Wrong remedy: Teoh with her son and Chong showing the medications prescribed by the emergency clinic at a private hospital at Chong’s office yesterday.
“I felt uneasy that they got it wrong. When I questioned the nurse about the dosage for the fever medication, the nurse said it was wrong, too,” she told a press conference at the office of MCA public complaints department head Datuk Michael Chong here yesterday. Another pharmacist confirmed that the dosage was double of what it should have been.
The pharmacist also said the lozenges given to treat Jing Teng’s sore throat were unsuitable for a toddler as the tablet’s size was too big. Angry and not satisfied with the hospital’s unprofessionalism, Teoh approached Chong to file a complaint. “We were lucky this time.
“But what about other parents caught in a similar situation?” she asked. Chong said he was concerned that lozenges for adults were prescribed to a young child. He was surprised that the pharmacist suggested she “chop them up into pieces” and feed them to her son. “I will bring this matter up to the Malaysian Medical Council and Health Ministry for investigation,” he said.
