Police in Japan are investigating the suspicious deaths of 48 elderly patients at the same hospital after autopsies on two of them revealed they had been poisoned by intravenous drips laced with a chemical found in disinfectant.
The murder investigation initially focused on two men who died within days of each other in the middle of last month. Both had been poisoned, and a tiny hole was found in an IV drip administered to one of them.
The investigation has widened to include 46 other people who have died since the beginning of July, all of whom were being treated on the same floor of Oguchi hospital in Yokohama as the two murdered men, according to Kyodo.
Last week staff found puncture marks in 10 of about 50 unused drip bags stored near the nurses’ station on the same floor.
Police have yet to publicly identify a suspect or establish a motive but on Monday, Kyodo quoted unnamed sources close to the investigation saying that the two recent deaths were likely to have been caused by someone with medical expertise who was connected with the hospital.
Nobuo Yamaki and Sozo Nishikawa, both 88, died during a three-day public holiday in mid-September when the 85-bed hospital was lightly staffed. The hospital said its entrance was locked and the building guarded throughout the night.
Autopsies determined that the Yamaki and Nishikawa had been poisoned with a chemical used in a disinfectant found at the nurses station.
Hospital staff were slow to make any connection between the deaths because the facility treats a large number of elderly and terminally ill patients, according to local media.
But one was quoted as saying that pneumonia or other hospital-acquired infections had been ruled out as the cause of the unusually large number of deaths.
“We see many people pass away due to the nature of this hospital, but had the impression that the number of those dying was increasing a little,” a hospital official told Kyodo.
Police have conceded that they are unlikely to establish the cause of death in every case since many of the bodies have already been cremated.
The investigation comes two months after Satoshi Uematsu, a former care worker, killed 19 residents at a care centre for the disabled and injured 27 other patients and staff in Japan’s worst mass killing since the second world war.
Uematsu, a 26-year-old former employee of the facility near Tokyo, had earlier written to the speaker of the lower house of Japan’s parliament demanding that the government permit euthanasia for people with disabilities.
After his arrest, he reportedly told police: “It is better that disabled people disappear.”
