Patients who developed major complications after they were injected with a wrongly mixed anaesthetic drug are considering a collective lawsuit against the concerned hospital to claim damaged for the actions of its medical staff’s actions.

The victims are also complaining about delays in the release of results of related toxicology tests, which they claim is affecting their treatment.

The complainants had gone for minor surgeries at the Kigali-based at La Croix du Sud Hospital but ended up being injected with a wrongly mixed Lidocaine drug, which the doctors at the hospital said was a factory error, that instead of the drug having three components it had four.

When Rwanda Today contacted Dr Jean Nyirinkwaya, the owner of the private medical facility, he did not give a specific reason for the delay but said the fourth element in the drug was yet to be ascertained.

“This is the first time a case like this is happening,” said Dr Nyirinkwaya. “It’s like we were opening the road for tests of this nature; it has taken some time.”

A medical expert we contacted to find out how long a test of this nature takes said it would take a maximum of one week to find out the elements in a drug.

The incidents happened in February this year but, three months later, the drug results are not yet out and the victims are running out of patience, accusing the government and the hospital of neglecting them yet they are both culpable.

READ: Nyirinkwaya’s hospital in trouble again as drug being tested

It is said that everyone who was injected with the flawed drug suffered side-effects that included inflammation around the area where the surgery was done. The known cases so far are eight.

“What happened to us has been kept silent,” said a victim who suffered an infirmity after a circumcision procedure but preferred anonymity. “What we are suffering from is something we don’t know.

“We don’t even know what will happen after 20 years; what if this drug is cancerous. We are all worried.”

The source added: “The government has been suspiciously silent about our issue.

“I have gone through untold pain, both physically and psychologically; I need assurance of my life because I don’t know what will happen.

“How can a flawed drug enter the country and be administered to people without being tested? There was negligence at many levels but it’s us who are suffering.
“Why can’t we at least have the results? Is that asking for too much?”

A doctor who worked at the hospital at the time took his wife there for a minor surgical procedure, excision of a small boil in the chest, and she was also injected with the drug. A few days later, the area became inflamed and very painful.

“When I realised that her condition was worsening I applied for her transfer but they couldn’t give it to me until I forced it,” said Dr Jean Claude Safari. “After an operation at King Faisal Hospital, they found the flesh in the entire area inflamed.”

Dr Safari, who resigned from his job at the hospital shortly after the incident, added that the institution received the drug just as it normally did and went on to use it on people who were lined up for surgery.

“However, after two surgeries, it was clear that there was a problem with the drug,” Dr Safari recalled. “But despite connecting dots on the two cases and reporting to the hospital authorities, there was no immediate response.

“Being a doctor working in the emergency section, I got to see the first two cases firsthand and did the connection that something was terribly wrong.”
Dr Safari added that when he reported his suspicious to his seniors he was ignored.

“After the baby who had been circumcised was also brought back and I saw the wound had become inflamed, I saw the issue was similar to another patient who came days before.

“I told Dr Musa (Tugilimana, the medical director at La Croix du Sud Hospital) what I had gathered from these cases but he just said we give painkillers to the baby and wait for three days and then open and clean out the clot around the wound.

“After the three days, the boy’s situation had become worse; the same case with the other male patient who had been circumcised.”

Those who underwent circumcision and other minor surgeries are said to have escaped great harm because the anaesthesia was local. Reports cite the case of a baby who was administered with a general anaesthetic injection during a procedure involving internal testicles alignment but died from the drug.

When Rwanda Today asked Dr Safari about the case, he said it happened after he had left the hospital.

“I just heard about the baby’s death from my former colleagues at the hospital,” he said.

In an interview, Dr Tugilimana said the hospital was in touch with the people who got the problem.

“We are trying to treat and help them,” he said. “We are still doing our best; we have to be optimistic that they will be okay.”

One of the victims, Scola Mutesi, whose arm was injected with the faulty drug, however said the hospital neglected them and even continued charging them fees even though it was the cause of the problem.

“We want to sue the hospital but let us all first heal,” said Ms Mutesi.