Cape Town - Nineteen newborns are at risk of contracting TB after staff at Mediclinic Milnerton vaccinated them with the wrong medication.
The hospital told the Cape Argus on Thursday night that the babies had been vaccinated with a variant of the BCG vaccine.
The variant, which is intended to treat patients with “certain bladder conditions”, contains a much “stronger concentrated culture” than the BCG typically used to immunise babies against TB.
“With this particular vaccine there is always the risk of certain side-effects. In higher doses those chances are increased. One of the side-effects of the normal vacinnation (BCG) is to get disseminated TB, but these cases are very rare,” said Mediclinic spokesman Dr Stefan Smuts.
Disseminated TB is a contagious bacterial infection in which the TB bacteria spreads throughout the body.
According to the World Health Organisation, the vaccine is derived from a strain of bovine tuberculosis bacillus.
The usual dosage is up to 80 percent effective.
On Thursday night, Mediclinic said: “In this instance the babies regrettably received the culture instead of the vaccine.”
For a Cape Town mother, who prefers to remain anonymous, news that her newborn son might be at risk of contracting TB has shocked her. Throughout her pregnancy, the mom had tried to stay as healthy as possible.
“I stopped smoking, I was eating properly… I wanted my child to have the perfect start.”
She said opting to vaccinate her child was a “no-brainer”. “It makes sense, you want your kid to be healthy.”
However, on Thursday she received a call from the hospital that she would have to bring her child back in. She was told there had been a mistake and that her son, a newborn little older than 10 days, would have to be placed on a course of TB medication and undergo repeated blood tests.
“And if the medication doesn’t work they said they might have to do a lumbar puncture.” She said for her and her husband it was like “being stuck in a bad dream”.
“When we got to the hospital they told us our son had been administered with 40 times the normal dosage (of the vaccine).”
And while she has been told her child will most likely survive, she is angry, frustrated and scared.
“You think spending R25 000 on the birth day would mean that I wouldn’t have to go through this… How can they make a mix-up like this?”
She said staff had told her that they had confused the vials of the two medications, which apparently look identical.
Mediclinic said in the statement that the error causing the incident had been “identified and rectified”.
“Our top priority is to ensure the health and safety of the babies. In this regard we have contacted the manufacturers of the medication and a paediatrician specialised in infectious diseases in order to determine what needs to be done.
“Mediclinic regrets this incident and has formally apologised to everyone affected.”
The mother said the hospital was covering the cost of her son’s treatment but she was worried how the trauma would affect the child’s development.
In 2010, Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that a child had been vaccinated with 10 times the normal dosage of BCG. The baby boy was given 0.5ml of the BCG vaccine instead of 0.05ml, lawyers for the family told the newspaper.
The child made a full recovery after being put on a course of antibiotics.
Cape Argus