I'm no hero, says pharmacy worker who found diluted chemo drugs

A pharmacy assistant from the Ontario hospital that first detected watered down chemotherapy drugs was praised for his "keen eye," but he doesn't accept the label of "hero."

"It's just part of the process, it's part of our job, and it just happens that this check that we made had a broader impact than we certainly would have anticipated," Craig Woudsma said Tuesday.

"But definitely not a hero, no," he said.

Speaking at a meeting of the Ontario legislature's standing committee on social policy, Woudsma, 28, of Peterborough Regional Hospital and senior pharmacy assistant Judy Turner described the chance discovery that revealed cancer drugs administered to 1,200 patients in Ontario and New Brunswick were diluted.

The committee is looking into the oversight, monitoring and regulation of non-accredited pharmaceutical companies in the province.

Last Tuesday, officials from the Peterborough hospital told committee members a red flag went up when an assistant checked the labels on IV bags provided by Marchese Hospital Solutions.

It was the first day that the hospital used the new supplier. A staffer noticed a difference between Marchese's label for the chemo drug gemcitabine and the one from the previous supplier, Baxter.

Woudsma said he began to question what the final concentration per millilitre was, which led to a series of phone calls and emails among hospital staff and the Durham Regional Cancer Centre and Marchese, the committee heard.

Woudsma told the committee he started to ask questions when hospital staff observed that the IV bags from Marchese Hospital Solutions required refrigeration while Baxter's didn't.

Progressive Conservative health critic Christine Elliott is concerned that experienced experts in the health-care system weren't able to catch the problem before so many patients were affected.

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I'm no hero, says pharmacy worker who found diluted chemo drugs