Mumbai, Jul 20 (TOI): A newborn was left in agony for nearly a month after a 2cm needle was left in his hip joint allegedly after a routine vaccination jab at a Panvel clinic. The foreign object came to the notice of parents Jairaj and Aastha Gaikwad, who live in Chembur, 19 days after vaccination, when the affected area started swelling up.

The baby boy started suffering from recurrent fever, which prompted the parents to take him to a local paediatrician. An X-ray and ultrasound investigation showed he had a bone infection (osteomyelitis) in the hip joint, but there wasn't yet any suspicion of a foreign body. The doctor referred the baby to Wadia Hospital for treatment.

On June 29, the baby was admitted to Wadia Hospital, where doctors said they started treating him for infection. "When his fever refused to subside, we decided to carry out a CT scan, which finally revealed the needle in the left buttock," said Dr Pradnya Bendre, paediatric surgeon at Wadia. Following the diagnosis, the parents gave the history of the child as receiving an intra-muscular vaccine injection when he was three-days-old. "The boy was lucky that it didn't harm him in a big way. The parents told us the baby would cry, but they understandably didn't have a way to know why he was crying," said Dr Bendre. The hospital decided to surgically remove the needle. "It was difficult to find the exact location of the needle. We had to carry out multiple X-rays to determine its position."