Hospitals Urged To Stop Reusing Blood Tube Holders

A top microbiologist has urged hospitals to stop reusing a commonly used device for drawing blood from patients – after finding their use may be linked to the transmission of the deadly hepatitis C virus to a patient last year.

The 53-year-old woman was admitted to Queen Mary Hospital for a liver transplant, but she died in December from multiple organ failure after contracting the virus at the hospital.

Professor Yuen Kwok-yung, chair professor of Infectious Diseases at the University of Hong Kong, helped to analyse the case, and said on Saturday that a contaminated blood collection tube holder may have been the main channel for the transmission of the virus.

Yuen explained that while different needles and blood tubes are used to draw blood from patients, a reusable casing – or tube holder – is also used as part of the apparatus.

The tube holder in this case may have been contaminated with the hepatitis C virus when blood was drawn from another patient, before it was used on the female patient.

Yuen said the virus could survive at room temperature for a month, so transmission was possible when the tube holder was re-used.

An investigation by the hospital found the woman may have contracted the virus from a drug addict in the same ward, via the tube holder.

Yuen stressed that this is a "very unusual" case, but he still urged the Hospital Authority to replace reusable tube holders with single-use versions.

Yuen said this could take a lot of time, so in the interim, there should be a daily replacement of the reusable tube holders until a sufficient supply of single-use holders are available.

He added that the hospital is also tracing 100 other patients who stayed in the same ward.

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