Transplant eyeball sent to pub

From the Courier Mail:

David Killick

January 24, 2008 07:21am

AN EYEBALL sent from Queensland for a transplant operation in Hobart went astray this week - arriving at a pub instead of the hospital.

A hotel guest in the Tasmanian city of Hobart was shocked when he received a foam box on Tuesday night containing a single human eyeball.

The box marked ``Live human organs for transplant'' was delivered by mistake by an unwitting taxi driver.

Hotel worker Gabriel Winner - who requested the name of the hotel not be used - says the agitated guest brought the esky to reception early yesterday morning.

``The guy left with me with a box with an eyeball in it,'' he said.

``He got the box and signed for it and opened it in the middle of the night.

``I thought this is just too weird. I went and put it in the fridge because I didn't know what else to do with it. It was more than a little disconcerting.''

A courier arrived shortly after and took the esky away.

Tracking records for the consignment number on the esky confirmed Australian Air Express picked the package up in Brisbane shortly before 4pm on Tuesday.

The package was dropped at 9.40pm that night. An Australian Air Express spokeswoman confirmed a ``failure in an internal handover process'' which meant the taxi driver was given the wrong package to deliver.

She said the company sincerely regretted the incident.

``As soon as we discovered the error we quickly rectified that and delivered the consignment within the appropriate timeframe,'' she said.

Mr Winner said he was disappointed that someone could have missed out on an operation because of such a basic error.

"It says on the box `human eye tissue for transplant'. What it probably means is the person who was relying on this piece of human tissue has now had to postpone their operation.

``Somebody died to donate these organs to somebody else and they've screwed it up and it's probably not even viable now.''

Queensland Health spokeswoman Penny Geraghty confirmed the incident but said tissue from the eye was recovered and successfully transferred to a patient yesterday morning.

``Nobody missed their operation. The tissue wasn't compromised,'' she said.

She said this was the first time an incident of this type had occurred.