Baby's hand amputated by mistake

Baby boy was treated with liquid calcium chloride instead of glucose

The story did not seem to present any trouble at the beginning. Young couple Inna and Sergey Kreps from Sakhalin were expecting their first baby and wishing it would be a boy.

Parents recall that they even decided to call him Vladislav before the boy was born. 

The baby was delivered at the maternity hospital of the city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. The baby was born healthy and beautiful. On the third day after his birth Vladik (short from Vladislav) caught a jaundice, which is usual for the most of the newborn and is not really dangerous.

Doctors prescribed glucose through the intravenous line.

“This is a common treatment”, a nurse Olga Ivanova says. “Many babies get this vitamin during the first days of their life”. 

After the procedure empty vitamin container was replaced with the new one, which had liquid calcium chloride instead of glucose.

“I noticed the fuss in the maternity hospital”, the baby's mother Inna recalls. “When it turned out it concerned my son I was terrified”.

The baby was promptly transferred to the reanimation. He was diagnosed with necrosis of the left arm. The hand suffered the most and had to be amputated.

At first the nurse who installed the intravenous line was accused. She could have confused the bottles. However, the trace led to the chemist's where the medicine was bottled. According to the investigation it is there that the labels on the bottles were mixed up.
 
Recently pharmacist Tatiana Ryabakon and packer Elena Panchenko have been tried at court.  The verdict was announced only last week. Tatiana was sentenced to ten months in prison and Elena to one year. Both women got suspended sentence but with a postscript where the both were denied the permission to work in making and packing medicines.

However, as the correspondents of Komsomolskaya Pravda found out the girls go on working at the same place in spite of the sentence.

Tatiana Ryabakon said to the KP correspondents, “The blame was lumped onto us. Elena and I are now waiting for the official documents. We will file a counter-claim.”