- Hello Jeff - Words cannot describe this situation. Here
we have medical doctors who are supposedly educated and taken an oath to
do no harm but whose greed and inhumanity have led to the spread of Hepatitis
B virus.
-
- This is India, a country where outdoor open defecation
takes place in many villages on the outskirts of cities in farm fields
and a country purported to be industrializing. I fail to understand how
so many US corporations would prefer to outsource work to India. Many homes
still do not have indoor, or even outdoor toilets. It is also obvious
that the medical health care in India is lacking and there does not appear
to be government control when we read of situations such as the one below.
-
- The medical (waste) equipment scandal seems to be very
widespread as is Hepatitis B virus. - Patty
-
- Recycling Medical Waste Causing Deadly Virus
Outbreak
- By Shaikh Azizur Rahman
- The National Newspaper Online 3-13-9
-
- Officials in Gujarat state seized hundreds of tons of
recycled medical equipment and arrested more than 100 medical scrap dealers
and 22 doctors over the past week, after an outbreak of hepatitis B killed
at least 70 people and left about 240 others infected with the deadly virus.
-
- Hepatitis B virus is usually transmitted through sexual
contact or by sharing needles or syringes.
-
- Two of the arrested doctors in the town of Modasa in
Sabarkantha district, the centre of the epidemic in Gujarat, were charged
with culpable homicide after it was learnt that some victims had been treated
in their clinic. The doctors -- father and son -- had used the same syringes
and needles on multiple patients, police said.
-
- After raiding underground warehouses in Modasa, police
and pollution control officials seized recycled medical waste, most of
it packaged and ready for supply to clinics or hospitals. A similar seizure
of recycled medical waste took place in other parts of Gujarat, including
Ahmedabad. In Modasa, Surat, Rajkot and Ahmedabad, officials discovered
makeshift packaging units where recycled needles, syringes, pediatric droppers,
intravenous drips and other equipment were being sorted, simply washed
and neatly repackaged for sale.
-
- Five Ahmedabad-based pharmaceutical companies were also
found repackaging used medical waste in the same unsafe manner, and the
Gujarat pollution control board has issued closure notices against them.
Investigators found that medical waste pickers collected used needles and
other equipment from hundreds of private hospitals, thousands of doctors
and some government hospitals and then sold them to underground recycling
gangs who traded in them.
-
- Scientists from Pune's National Institute of Virology
identified the killer virus as a "dangerously mutated strain"
of hepatitis B [virus] that can kill its victims in an unusually short
time. Jay Narayan Vyas, Gujarat's health minister, said his department
was sure the infection spread fast because of the use of infected syringes
or needles by private doctors and that his government would take stringent
action against those responsible. "The situation turned worse because
private doctors and hospitals are not under a regulatory mechanism. In
the absence of any legal obligation and related punitive measures of dereliction,
the private medical practitioners use substandard facilities and equipment,"
Mr Vyas said.
-
- The practice of recycling medical equipment is not a
new problem in India. The Indian Clinical Epidemiology Network said that
up to 31.6 per cent of the 3 billion to 6 billion injections administered
in the country annually were done with used equipment and carried the potential
risk of spreading such blood-borne viruses as those causing hepatitis and
AIDS. The authorities in Gujarat were aware that many clinics in the state
were unsafe but had failed to act sooner because of the "high regard
for doctors," said Dr Ramesh Shah, secretary of the Gujarat Pollution
Control Board.
-
- "This entire saga of medical waste trading is disgusting,
and we will not spare the offenders. I am aghast that doctors can risk
lives like this for the cost of small change." Some experts said that
in the absence of a regulatory mechanism, similar outbreaks are bound to
occur in the future.
-
- "There is no law under which it could be mandatory
for Gujarat's 13 000 private medical practitioners to reveal where they
bought their equipment. In this situation, many culprits -- including doctors
and infected equipment suppliers -- are slipping out of the police dragnet,"
said one Ahmedabad-based pollution control officer. "We have no idea
how many thousands of infected needles or syringes may already be in use
in medical clinics across the state. It is impossible to trace them all,"
he said.
-
- http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090312/FOREIGN/97643596/1103/NEWS
-
-
- Communicated by
- HealthMap Alerts via
- ProMED-mail <mailto:promed@promedmail.org>promed@promedmail.org
-
- This is an appalling revelation. In these circumstances,
it seems unnecessary to attribute the outbreak to a "dangerously mutated
strain" of hepatitis B virus that can kill its victims in an unusually
short period. The exposure of patients to non-sterile recycled medical
equipment would be likely to enhance the severity of any disease condition.
- Mod.CP
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