Local action not enough

Tuesday, April 8, 2008 | 2:07 a.m.

What is particularly maddening about the ongoing hepatitis scare in Nevada is that transmission of the disease through unsafe injection practices was well-known in medical circles.

For example, in its December 2002 newsletter, the American Society of Anesthesiologists reported on a hepatitis C outbreak in Norman, Okla. The reuse of syringes at a hospital was identified as a source of the outbreak.

“It is entirely unacceptable and extremely dangerous to reuse ... syringes on multiple patients,” a medical doctor wrote in the newsletter.

The doctor cited a 1990 study confirming the risk of contamination from reused syringes. She also cited a 1995 survey, writing: “Alarmingly, 39 percent of anesthesiologists reported reusing syringes from one patient to the other.”

In 2003, after investigating the Norman outbreak as well as outbreaks in New York and Nebraska, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a paper warning of the cause “unsafe injection practices, primarily reuse of syringes.”

Yet local health officials announced Feb. 27 that the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada had been routinely reusing syringes, and that six cases of hepatitis C had been traced to the center. Forty-thousand former patients of the center, dating to March 2004, were notified that they might have been exposed to hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV.

Shortly after the news of the outbreak broke here, CDC Director Julie Gerberding said, “Our concern is that this could represent the tip of the iceberg.” Shutting down the Endoscopy Center the city of Las Vegas suspended its business license Feb. 29 and revoked it Monday was an appropriate local action. The city also fined the center $500,000.

What is urgently needed now is national action, given that doctors and nurses have shown a pattern of ignoring stark warnings.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and representatives from three other states that have had outbreaks are calling upon a House subcommittee on health to hold hearings. We believe congressional hearings would help educate an unwary public and help reveal the national scope of such unsafe medical practices.