Six more kids harmed by blood transfusion.

In yet another botched blood transfusion case, six Thalassemia-affected children were taken seriously ill after being transfused with blood at District Headquarters Hospital in Nayagarh district, India.

Similar incidents have been reported from Burla hospital and Balasore District Headquarters Hospital. Two patients at Burla had been given HIV positive and Hepatitis B positive blood, and a three year girl child had been given Hepatitis C blood.

India has been a mecca of “medical cruises” as American and other patients without adequate medical coverage found they could both vacation in India and have a hip replaced for less than the cost of their insurance deductible at home. But in just 2 recent years, over 2,200 patients in India contracted HIV from blood transfusions. 

If you are still of the mindset that your doctor knows best, you might want to educate yourself about blood medicine. You can start with a column I wrote about the safety, or rather lack thereof, of blood as medicine.

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Bill K. Underwood is the author of several novels and one non-fiction self-help book, all available at Amazon.com. You can help support this site by purchasing one of his books.

Advances in Blood Medicine, Part One

 

When a patient refuses chemo-therapy or radiation therapy, you may occasionally see it referred to as “life-saving” chemo or “life-saving” radiation, but often not.

Why not? Because most readers know that chemo or radiation may or may not be life-saving, and that rejecting one or the other doesn’t mean the patient has opted to end their life; it may simply mean they have chosen some other treatment.