Hospital apologizes for injecting middle-schoolers with expired TB tests

A hospital in North China’s Shanxi Province has apologized for giving out-of-date injections to over 30 middle school students during tuberculosis screening.

A total of 36 students from an unnamed middle school were given the expired injections during examinations at Tongde Hospital, Yuncheng, from Thursday to Sunday.

The children were injected with tuberculin, a substance derived from tuberculosis bacteria, as part of the internationally-used Mantoux test to detect possible tuberculosis infection.

However, due to the negligence of pharmacists and nurses, tuberculin was used that had expired the day before the injections began, the hospital wrote in an apology statement released on its website Sunday.

Tongde Hospital has started an investigation into the case and will evaluate the health of the 36 students, it said in the statement.

The hospital personnel responsible will be duly punished, the statement added.

Chen Shuzhen, a doctor at the Yuncheng Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said the expired bacteria are unlikely to cause any serious side effects .

No students have displayed any negative symptoms after receiving the injections as of press time.

Many netizens have called for the local government to launch an investigation into the case.

This is not the first expired injection scandal in China.

Seventeen babies became ill after they were given expired injections at a hospital in Harbin, Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province in 2010.

A mother and daughter who illegally sold improperly stored or expired vaccines worth more than 570 million yuan ($88 million) across 20 provinciallevel regions since 2011 were sentenced to 19 years and six years in prison in May, the People’s Daily reported.