Hospital switched babies

Here’s a funny story that just appeared on The Straits Times today:

July 20, 2009
Hospital switched babies

SEOUL – A SOUTH Korean court has ordered a hospital to pay a mother 70 million won (S$80,796) in damages after it mistakenly gave her the wrong baby 16 years ago.

The unidentified woman gave birth at the hospital in Guri, a satellite city west of Seoul, in 1992 but a nurse mistook another baby for her own daughter.

The mother began suspecting the child was not her own last July when her blood type turned out to be type A. She and her husband were both type B.

A genetic test proved the daughter was biologically unrelated.

Judge Lee Joon-Ho, in a ruling on Sunday quoted by local media Monday, said the hospital failed to take adequate care of the newborn babies and return each one to the right parents.

Rest of article here. Now, the article got me thinking: what are the chances of mixed up babies in Singapore?

Based on what I saw, during Hannah’s birth I’ll say pretty low. As soon as Ling was admitted to Thomson Medical, she was IDed and a computer generated wrist tag created for her to wear. When Hannah popped, she got a similar tag too, so that at all times mummy was tagged to baby. To actually end up getting someone else’s baby would mean that the tags need to be intentionally (i.e. not accidental) swapped.

But then again, it’s a human system. Who knows? I’m gonna have to pay real close attention to Hannah… if she likes computer games, I’ll know for sure then LOL.