TOKYO - A JAPANESE woman has sued a hospital that implanted the wrong fertilised egg in her womb leading her to abort the foetus, in the country's first reported case of its kind, the hospital said on Friday.

The woman, aged in her 20s, aborted the fetus in the ninth week after the hospital told her that a doctor had likely made a mistake and implanted an egg believed to have come from another woman aged in her 40s.

She has filed a lawsuit demanding 20 million yen (S$327,000) in damages from the Kagawa Prefecture in south-western Japan that runs the hospital over the blunder, which occurred last September.

'I can't make up for what I did,' 61-year-old obstetrician Kiyoya Kawada from Kagawa Prefecture Central Hospital told public broadcaster NHK. 'She finally became pregnant but ... I made a mistake and I'm terribly sorry.'

When the bad news broke, 'the woman was dumb-struck' and the husband angrily blamed the hospital, head of gynaecology Masaru Yonezawa told reporters.

But the gynaecologist added: 'We don't think we inflicted terrible damage on her, physically speaking.' -- AFP