Tampered surgical tools probe progresses: RCMP

An investigation into the deliberate contamination of surgical tools at a Kamloops, B.C., hospital is making progress, but the RCMP say they are still not ready to lay charges.

On April 14, police were called in after staff at the Royal Inland Hospital found surgical tools that had been deliberately contaminated.

The head of the RCMP major crimes unit in Kamloops, Staff Sgt. Gary Kerr, told CBC News that initially, police had no idea why someone would tamper with surgical equipment, but now investigators have got some leads.

"We've got a few ideas as to what the motive might have been, and we certainly have made some fairly significant progress over the last week or 10 days. It is moving forward," said Kerr.

The investigation is going slowly because a small number of officers have to interview almost 100 people, but there's good reason for the methodical approach, said Kerr.

"The actual policemen that are doing the interviews, we've kept that group to a fairly small number so we've got some consistency and continuity on the interviews," he said.

"If you keep the same interviewers, then a lot of the information will stay with them as they do the interviews, rather than having a large number of interviews, and then there's sometimes a chance or a possibility that something could be missed," said Kerr.

The investigators should be done their interviews by the end of next week,he said.

Prior incidents not as serious

The incident was not the first time in recent months that contaminated instruments were found at the Royal Inland Hospital.Some were also found there in February and March, but all the previous incidents were considered minor and blamed on hospital procedures and overburdened staff making mistakes.

But the most recent incident was obvious, deliberate and far more serious, said Kerr.

"In the original cases in February or March whether it was human error or somebody actually doing something on purpose ... on a scale of one to 10, that would have been a 1. This is like a 9 or 10. The two don't even really compare."