Both women are Asian and have permanent residence in the Czech Republic (representative)
Prague:
A Prague hospital apologized Thursday to a patient who had an involuntary abortion last week after mixing one patient with another.
One of the women came to the hospital for a regular check-up because she was pregnant, while the other woman came for a dilation and curettage, a tissue removal surgery that is also a method of terminating a pregnancy.
Local media said both men were Asian and had permanent residence in the Czech Republic.
Hospital staff mixed them together and performed the procedure on the pregnant patient, resulting in her losing her fetus.
“Unfortunately, this was a human error, a human failure,” Jan Kvacek, director of Prague’s Blovka Hospital, told reporters on Thursday.
Kvacek said the hospital was “deeply sorry” for what he called a “tragic” chaotic incident and said the facility also provided psychological and legal assistance to patients.
“There is no doubt that she is entitled to compensation,” he added, blaming a language barrier as one of the reasons for the incident.
Michal Zikan, head of the hospital’s obstetrics and gynecology department, said the patient signed a document in Czech, but the document belonged to another patient.
“Three days ago, in the presence of an interpreter, the patient was informed in detail what test she would undergo, and it was just a test,” Zikan told reporters.
He added that the surgeons had “no reason to believe they were treating another patient”.
The hospital has suspended one employee and ordered another to work under expert supervision.
The case is similar to that of Thi-Nho Vo, a Vietnamese-French woman who lost her child in 1991 after a similar patient mix-up in Lyon.
Thi-Nho filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights, claiming the hospital was guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
But the court ruled in 2003 that involuntary abortion did not constitute manslaughter, setting a precedent on the legal status of unborn babies.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
