Director of medical education and training PK Das inspects saline stock at the hospital’s store room (file picture)

Cuttack, Sept. 19: The director of medical education and training (DMET) P.K. Das has recommended “stern action” against a pharmacist and a nurse for administering expired saline that had allegedly resulted in the death of a woman at SCB Medical College and Hospital.

Tension had erupted at the hospital following the death of the 60-year-old woman from Ganjam district on August 16. The deceased, identified as Purna Naik, had allegedly died in the medicine ward of the hospital hours after she was administered saline that had crossed its expiry date.

Naik was undergoing treatment at the medicine ward from August 3. She was suffering from malaria.

Following the incident, the government had conducted an inquiry and also visited the store on August 17 to probe the matter. Both the nurse and the pharmacist have been charged with negligence and dereliction of duty, as the pharmacist had issued the saline from the medical storeroom without checking the batch number and expiry date and the nurse had administered it without taking the same precautions. “Investigations have revealed that the saline was issued from the storeroom by pharmacist Baikuntha Nath Tripathy and was later administered by nurse Smarita Das without checking its validity,” said Das.

He added that another saline bottle that had crossed its expiry date was also recovered from the same ward. The nurse had removed the expired saline five minutes after administering it.

The report states that SCB had received around 20,000 bottles of 10 per cent dextrose solution from the State Drug Management Unit, Bhubaneswar on October 16, 2009.

Later, the dextrose solutions were supplied to the store for distribution in different wards at different times. Of the 20,000 bottles, the last batch of 1,500 bottles was supplied to the store from the main depot at the hospital on February 13, 2011.

The pharmacist had neither written down the batch number in the register nor checked the labels on the packets because of which some of the 1,500 bottles of dextrose solutions that had crossed their expiry dates were put into circulation.

The SCB authorities have said steps would be taken on the basis of the DMET report.

“We have issued a showcause notice to the nurse and pharmacist and appropriate action will be taken,” said emergency officer B.N. Moharana.

Moharana, however, maintained that the patient had died after her condition deteriorated. Under no circumstances could an expired saline drip result in the death of a person unless the saline was spurious, he added.