A deceased baby was accidentally cremated when staff at an Australian hospital failed to check an ID tag on the infant that had been obscured by a blanket.
The child, who had been stillborn, was confused with another infant, miscarried at 20 weeks at Royal North Shore Hospital’s mortuary.
The heartbreaking mix-up was revealed by New South Wales health minister Jillian Skinner at a government meeting, where it was revealed that other patients had also been misidentified.
The hospital apologised to the parents, who had wished to bury their baby. In a statement, Royal North Shore Hospital said:
“A full investigation was undertaken and the families were fully informed of its outcome.
“A number of measures have since been put in place to avoid a similar mistake being repeated in the future.”
Minister Skinner said incidents like these are “tragic, but rare.”
Just a month ago it was revealed that a newborn baby had died and another was fighting for its life after they were given nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas, instead of oxygen at another Sydney hospital.
The incident occurred at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital, where both babies were born in June and July of this year. An investigation revealed that an oxygen outlet installed in a wall at the hospital’s neonatal resuscitation unit in July 2015 had been emitting nitrous oxide instead of oxygen.
The alarm was only raised by a paediatrician when the second baby fell ill.
