Woman sues NWRHA over bad blood

Angela Badree, of 7 Rajack Street, Williamsville, has sued the North West Regional Health Authority (NWRHA) for the negligence of the medical staff who placed her blood in a bottle that was wrongly labelled and which led to her receiving the wrong blood type.

Badree, who has been told that she can no longer work, three years after the botched transfusion, still experiences pain and discomfort and her mobility has been severely affected. The once active pensioner now walks with a walking stick or uses a wheelchair and has to get help to move around.

Badree was expected to undergo coronary artery bypass graft surgery, scheduled for February 21, 2014. She was told she needed to pints of blood before the surgery.

Over a two-day period - February 18 and 19 – Badree was given B Positive Blood on four occasions on the instructions of a doctor at the hospital.

Her blood type is A Positive.

The procedure had to be stopped at intervals after Badree complained of a series of ailments including, uncontrolled itching, pain and shortness of breath. The procedure was eventually stopped on February 19, by another doctor.

Her surgery was cancelled and after she began passing blood in her urine, Badree was advised to get a blood test done at a private nursing home. Several days later on February 27, Badree said she was told by a doctor at the hospital that she was transfused with B Positive blood when in fact her blood type was A Positive. She later learned her blood was placed in a bottle that was labelled with someone else’s name and she experienced an acute reaction to the transfusion .

Badree’s lawsuit contends that despite her complaints, medical staff at the Port of Spain General Hospital conducted the transfusion four times instead of rechecking and reverifying her name, blood group and hospital information.

According to the nurses’ notes obtained by Badree’s lawyers, Anand Ramlogan, SC, Jayanti Lutchmedial and Trishana Ramnath, it documented the distress she experienced during the failed transfusion attempts.

Notes of an inquiry conducted by senior haematologists at the hospital also noted that “at no time was a sample of blood sent to the lab for a cross match when units of blood was returned to the blood bench.”