Nationwide — Tamika Thomas, an African American girl from Las Vegas, Nevada present process IVF therapy, tragically misplaced her child after her native pharmacy mistakenly supplied her with abortion medicine as an alternative of the fertility medicine she wanted.
In 2019, Thomas, who’s a mom of 4, turned to in vitro fertilization (IVF) after having her Fallopian tubes eliminated. She and her husband had paid for the expensive process out-of-pocket because it wouldn’t be coated by insurance coverage.
After having two embryos transferred, she went to her native CVS pharmacy in North Los Angeles to get “dietary supplements to make our our bodies assume it’s pregnant,” she informed 8 Information Now.
Nonetheless, as an alternative of the correct drugs, she was apparently given Misoprostol, which is used for “medicine abortion.”
Thomas filed a grievance with the Nevada State Board of Pharmacy, which discovered that the pharmacy made a number of errors. They guessed the prescription as a result of they couldn’t perceive the physician’s handwriting as an alternative of consulting the physician to make clear.
What made issues worse was that one other pharmacist did not observe the protocol as they didn’t clarify to Thomas what to anticipate with Misoprostol, which might have alerted them to the error.
Through the pharmacy board listening to, one of many pharmacists pointed to cutbacks by CVS, which had left them overwhelmed juggling varied duties.
The pharmacy didn’t lose its license and was solely fined $10,000, the utmost quantity allowed by statute for its vicarious legal responsibility for the pharmacists’ errors. Sadly, Tamika couldn’t sue the pharmacy as a result of statute of limitations expiring, as this incident occurred in 2019.
In response, CVS issued an apology and acknowledged their dedication to affected person security. Nonetheless, for Tamika, the apology couldn’t undo the immense loss she skilled.
“I perceive that folks make errors,” Thomas mentioned on the listening to. “However that mistake took one thing from me.”
