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The following is issued on behalf of the Hospital Authority:
The spokesperson for Hong Kong Buddhist Hospital (HKBH) made the following announcement today (July 28) on a blood storage incident:
A staff member of HKBH discovered the malfunction of one of the blood refrigerators in HKBH when she took a blood bag at noon on July 23. The blood refrigerator was immediately checked by the hospital maintenance team and it is noted that the malfunction had led to the short circuit of the power supply. A total of 63 affected bags of blood were immediately returned to Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) for quarantine and were confirmed to be not suitable for transfusion. Urgent blood stock was fully supported by QEH and patient service in HKBH was not affected.
The blood refrigerator all along has had a double safeguard mechanism. Self-alarm of the refrigerator will be activated when its operation is abnormal and the duty staff of a 24-hour operating ward will also be alerted via remote alarm in its nurse station simultaneously. According to initial investigation of the incident, the remote alarm had been muted before the incident and thus no staff member was aware when it occurred.
Immediate actions taken by the hospital management for the incident were as follows:
1. Change of the remote alarm at the nurse station to a type without preset manual mute switch; and
2. The remote alarm sound will be repeated again even it is temporarily muted and until the malfunction is rectified.
The hospital management expresses deep apology to the public and the blood donors of the affected blood. We will seriously look into the root cause of the incident and will act in accordance with the established human resources procedures if deemed necessary. The incident has been reported to the Hospital Authority Head Office (HAHO). The investigation will be completed in six to eight weeks and the report will be submitted to the HAHO.
Ends/Thursday, July 28, 2011
Issued at HKT 20:16
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