Baby critical after paracetamol overdose in Glasgow hospital | UK News

An eight-week-old baby is in a critical condition after he was given ten times the recommended dose of paracetamol at the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow.

Ahad and Hira Ul Hassan said their son Zohan was healthy when he was born seven weeks early on 24 January.

But during a routine surgery last week, the child was given 200mg of paracetamol instead of 20mg.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said it had apologised to the family and launched an investigation into what happened.

But his parents say they no longer trust the hospital to treat their son.

“It is heart-breaking,” Ahad told Scotland News.

“We feel like there is nothing left in our life, he is our only child.

“It’s so horrible what they have done to him.

“I see so many children coming to this hospital and I just don’t want the same thing to happen to them as well.”

The couple, from Ayr, said their son was diagnosed with a hernia on the left side of his abdomen at Crosshouse Hospital in Kilmarnock when he was six weeks old.

He was transferred to the Royal Hospital for Children and underwent hernia surgery on 9 March.

Zohan was discharged on 11 March but his stomach began to swell again a week later, and doctors said he needed another hernia surgery on his right side.

He was monitored for two days before he underwent the second operation on 18 March.

Ahad and his wife Hira were not worried about the surgery since the first procedure had gone smoothly.

“I wasn’t there since he had already had the surgery five days before and it was a straight-forward process so I went to work this time,” he said.

But he said the anaesthesiologist called him shortly after midday with news that staff had made a “big mistake” with painkillers.

“My wife told me that when the baby came out of the surgery, he was trying to cry but he was struggling to make any noise,” Ahad said.

“His heartbeat was really high and he wasn’t looking normal. He looked totally different, like he was in a lot of pain.”

He said the medical team gave Zohan a dose of acetylcysteine – an antidote for paracetamol poisoning.

“They started putting cannulas all over his body,” Ahad said.

“Below his tummy, on his hands, on his head, and they started taking blood samples to see the overdose amount.”

The family were moved into a ward while nurses checked on the baby periodically.

“We were expecting to be moved into an high-dependence unit where a nurse can look after him all the time,” he said. “But he was left with us.”

But while they were in the ward, Zohan’s parents noticed the baby “shivering” and doing “jerky” movements with his hands.

They informed the medical team and Zohan was eventually moved into neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) once Ahad showed staff videos of his seizures.

“He was moved to the NICU on Wednesday night (19 March) and he has been there on a ventilator since then,” he said.

An MRI scan found swelling on the baby’s brain, but the full impact on Zohan is currently unclear.

However Ahad said he could have irreversible brain damage and problems with his vision.

“There will be other damage as well but they can’t tell right now,” he said.

“There is no treatment.

“This is the first time this has happened in this hospital and there is nothing in the past for us to follow and see why this happened.”

Zohan has been sedated since the overdose to minimise damage, but Ahad said his medication will be reduced to wake him up soon.

The couple are staying in accommodation near the hospital so they can be near their child while he is in the NICU.

“We have lost trust in the NHS,” Ahad said. “Our life has just turned upside down and we don’t know what to do.

“We are just praying for a miracle and that he gets better.

“We are just staying next to him all the time because we don’t trust the staff anymore.

“We want to see the faces of everyone who is touching our baby and we want to check each medication they are giving him.”

Dr Claire Harrow, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde’s deputy medical director for acute services, said: “We would like to sincerely apologise to the family of baby Zohan Ul Hassan.

“We are continuing to deliver the best possible care for Zohan and we continue to offer support to his family at this distressing time.

“We have launched a full investigation into this incident and his family will be fully informed of and involved in this process as it continues.”