Beauty Clinic Doctor Found Guilty Of Manslaughter

A High Court jury on Tuesday found a doctor guilty of manslaughter for giving a contaminated blood infusion to a customer, which led to the customer’s death seven years ago.

The court heard that Mak Wan-ling had administered the CIK therapy – which involved the extraction and treatment of the patient’s blood before it was re-injected – on 46-year-old Chan Yuen-lam at the DR Beauty clinic on October 3, 2012.

Chan felt unwell after receiving the infusion and was admitted to the Ruttonjee Hospital on October 4. Tests revealed her blood was contaminated with the bacteria, mycobacterium abscessus.

She was diagnosed with septic shock, and died on October 10, 2012, of multiple organ failure.

The jury of four men and five women returned a unanimous guilty verdict on the manslaughter charge, after around seven hours of deliberations.

Mak had been ordered to face a retrial in 2018, after a different jury had been unable to reach a majority verdict.

Two other defendants in the 2017 trial, DR Group founder Stephen Chow and technician Billy Chan were convicted of manslaughter, and later jailed for 12 and 10 years respectively.