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. 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.

Source: The Guardian October 03, 2016 06:46 UTC