Detention Centre Sickens Foreign Inmate With Wrong Medication

[Mulboyne]

Asahi: Wrong medicine sickens detainee
A Sri Lankan man held at an immigration facility fell ill in May after an officer mistakenly gave him an anti-itch steroid lotion instead of a laxative, officials at the facility told The Asahi Shimbun. The case was one of eight such mistakes that officers at the Nishi-Nihon Immigration Center in Ibaraki, Osaka Prefecture, made while distributing medicines between January and July, according to the officials and a group working for foreigners in custody. Soon after the 30-year-old Sri Lankan man drank the liquid, he complained of chest pains and vomited, they said. He was taken to hospital and his stomach was pumped. He remained in poor physical condition for several days.

The Japanese version explains that the man had complained of a rash on his face and constipation. The doctor prescribed a lotion for his face, which was for external use only, and a liquid laxative. The officer poured them into the wrong containers so the man would have drunk the face lotion and massaged his rash with laxative. Presumably, then, he also got shitfaced. A spokesman for the Immigration Centre says four other prisoners got the wrong medication on other occasions but suffered no ill-effects.

[Charles]

The officer poured them into the wrong containers so the man would have drunk the face lotion and massaged his rash with laxative..

I read that and cracked up at that point, I thought, "Hey I think I've heard this one before. But I can't remember the punchline." And then you delivered.