Results tagged “hepatitis”

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.

Remember that whole Hep-A scare at West Village bar Socialista? Reports came in this week that the whole thing may have been a joke -- but who's laughing? Probably not the owners of Socialista.

Governor Spitzer said that the NY State Department of Health's response regarding the Nassau County doctor exposed over 600 patients to hepatitis C and HIV was "unacceptably slow" and ordered an investigation. Dr. Harvey Finkelstein, an anesthesiologist, reused syringes and multiple-dose medicine vials between January 2000 and January 2005; some patients learned they had contracted hepatitis in 2005, but the state and Nassau County officials waited 34 months to contact other patients. It turns out...