Parents of 2-year-old Alfie Jackson are having to wait for three months to find out if there are any aftereffects after the toddler picked up a bloody syringe and put it in his mouth while visiting a local hospital.

Mom Jody Sykes recently visited the Huddersfield Royal Infirmary in the UK with her 23-month-old son Alfie. While her partner was being seen by a doctor, she noticed Alfie’s mouth was covered with blood. It seems that he picked up a blood-filled syringe and then put his hand in his mouth.

Jody told The Huddersfield Daily Examiner, "There was a syringe filled with blood and my son got hold of it. We turned around and he put his hand full of blood into his mouth. I screamed ‘put it down’ and he started crying. I was absolutely petrified that he could catch something or get a disease as it was someone else’s blood.”

Apparently while the hospital has a procedure for these types of instances that they should have followed, all they did was clean him with wipes. When Jody talked to the hospital the following day, they realized that Alfie hadn’t been treated and immediately gave him a hepatitis shot.

Adding insult to injury, his parents now have to wait three months to find out if he contracted any diseases from the blood in the syringe. According to Jody, "No one can tell me if that was clean, if it wasn't diseased or infected."

While the hospital has apologized to Alfie’s parents and says they are looking into their procedures, that doesn’t really help these anxious parents and their excruciating wait. We can only hope that the hospital will move to correct this glaring act of negligence and make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.

Source: Huddersfeld Daily Examiner
