Results tagged “dialysis”

The Archdiocese of New York is asking a priest at a Staten Island church to go back to his "native Philippines because he’s ill with kidney disease," the Staten Island Advance reports. Rev. Eusebio Pablito Maghari, who has been at the church for six years, says that that he was told he can't stay on because of his health issues (diet and lost sight in one eye) and required weekly dialysis—a letter told him "The rectory is not the appropriate place for you to live."

Having to go on dialysis is bad enough, but patients who received their treatment at Life Care Dialysis Center on West 61st Street have it even worse; at least one of them contracted Hepatitis C thanks to contaminated equipment! After inspecting the place last month, the Health Department shut it down, noting that employees failed to wash their hands, disinfect equipment or change gloves between patients. A spokesperson for the DOH tells the Times, “It was repulsive. The treatment chairs that they gave people to relax in had someone else’s dried blood on them.” On Monday the state’s health commissioner sent letters to 657 patients of the clinic urging them to get tested for hepatitis C, hepatitis B and H.I.V. Dr. Walter Wasser, the clinic’s operator and medical director, was fined $300,000 and could also lose his medical license, the Times reports.