After four-day battle, patient with wrongly transfused blood dies
The Statesman | 8 November 2025
Namita Bagdi, a woman in her mid-40s who had to be transferred to the intensive care unit of Burdwan Medical College & Hospital after she was transfused with blood meant for another patient, died last night after a four-day struggle to survive the effects of the gross mistake.
A resident of Tulsidanga, she had been admitted to the female medicine ward of the hospital last Saturday after she was bitten by a venomous snake. Fifty three-year-old Namita Majhi, a resident of Balgona in Bhatar block, was admitted to the same ward the next day (Sunday) after being referred to the tertiary medical college hospital from Bhatar block hospital as she was suffering from persistent anaemia and needed blood transfusion due to her falling haemoglobin level.
Majhi’s son Sanjoy had procured two units of blood and had handed it over to the nurses on duty on Sunday afternoon. The on-duty nursing staff by mistake administered the blood collected for Namita Majhi to Namita Bagdi.
When Namita Bagdi complained of severe discomfort due to haemolytic transfusion reaction, the nursing staff realised the mistake and the nursing superintendent was summoned. On seeing the situation, she immediately stopped the transfusion. But by that time, about 50 per cent of one unit had been transfused, sources at the hospital said. The blood did not match Bagdi’s blood group, compounding the consequences.
Patients, in such cases, “suffer absolute collapse of the immune system due to transfusion of foreign blood from incompatible donors (different blood group),” explained Kabi Ghosh, secretary, West Bengal Voluntary Blood Donors’ Society. He added: “The negligent nurses should be penalised at once.”
Namita Bagdi was rushed to the ICU, where she was being monitored constantly. But she had developed a fever and headache, and kept on vomiting. The BMCH authorities had initiated an internal probe into the irregularity. But after Bagdi’s death last night, they have set up a high-level five-member inquiry committee to examine the incident thoroughly, the hospital’s medical superintendent and vice-principal, Dr Tapas Ghosh, said.