Bonai/Sundargarh: In a shocking case of gross medical negligence in a government hospital in Odisha's Sundargarh district, a four year-old girl suffering from fever was allegedly administered anti-rabies vaccine following a wrong prescription by the doctor on duty.

The incident, which took place in Bonai sub-divsional hospital (SDH), came to the fore after the affected family reported the matter. 

As per the allegations, the parents of the minor girl, who hail from Koida, took her to the SDH after she suffered from fever on July 29. However, the pediatrician who examined the child prescribed anti-rabies vaccine (ARV) as per the standard schedule. When the girl's mother Chinmayee Jena, went over to the drug store on campus, the pharmacist enquired if the child had a dog bite to which the former denied. But the medicine store staff went ahead and injected the ARV. After the family got back home, the child developed allergy symptoms all over her body, prompting the parents to go back to the doctor for clarification. 

To their dismay, when the doctor saw the precription again, he allegedly tore it and wrote a fresh one, indicating a medication error. He also tried to cover up the issue citing that the injection was not ARV but part of routine immunisation, the child's mother claimed. 

"On July 29th, my daughter developed allergy all over the body. So we took her to Bonai hospital. The doctor who examined her precribed rabies vaccine. When I went to the government drug store, the phramacist asked if it was a case of dogbite. Inspite of me denying any such thing, he went ahead and administered the ARV. By God's grace, my daughter has not shown any adverse reaction to the wrong injection till now. However, her she is still running high fever. If the injection would have caused any harmful consequence and we would have lost our child, who would be responsible?," she told mediapersons. Chinmayee also added that the hospital staff were now asking them to get all the remaining does of the ARV. 

The incident comes barely a day after medical services were carried out in darkness in the hospital following a power cut and back up failure, sparking serious concern on the poor state of affairs in government facilities.