- SAN FRANCISCO - Thousands of patients who had blood drawn
at a California laboratory will be warned to take AIDS and hepatitis tests
after a technician at the lab admitted she sometimes reused disposable
hypodermic needles, officials said on Friday.
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- Confirming a report in the San Francisco
Chronicle newspaper, state health authorities and Anglo-U.S. drug maker
SmithKline Beecham (SB.L) said they were mailing warnings to at least 3,600
patients in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties who had blood work performed
at a SmithKline clinical lab in Palo Alto, Calif.
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- SmithKline fired the unidentified technician,
or phlebotomist, after a colleague saw her reuse a needle on March 22.
During an investigation, the phlebotomist acknowledged reusing certain
needles to draw blood from patients with veins that were difficult to access.
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- The phlebotomist, who worked at the lab
since June 1, 1997, said she would wash some used needles with water and
hydrogen peroxide " a mixture that health officials said could kill
some, but not all, blood-borne pathogens.
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- The state department of health, which
was investigating the incident along with federal and local health authorities,
said the risk to patients of possible infection was "low'' but not
nonexistent.
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- "Although the risk of infection
to anyone who had blood drawn by this phlebotomist is low, reusing needles
in any way is unsafe and a breach of standard medical practices,'' California
Health Officer James Stratton said in a statement.
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- State health officials would not discuss
the phlebotomist's background but did say she had worked at between five
and 10 other sites before she began work at the Palo Alto lab. It was not
known when the woman began reusing needles, how often she reused them or
if she reused them at any of the other facilities, the officials said.
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- "In some cases she worked under
close supervision, which makes it unlikely she was reusing needles,'' said
Lea Brooks, a spokeswoman for the state health department. "In other
cases she wasn't in the direct line of vision of a supervisor.''
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- SmithKline said the technician's safety
lapse was "shocking,'' and added the company would pay the costs of
running blood tests on patients who had work done at the lab.
-
- "As a company whose overriding objective
is to improve the health of people everywhere, we are shocked by this apparent
disregard for company procedures,'' John Okkerse, president of Philadelphia-based
SmithKline Beecham Clinical Laboratories, said in a statement.
-
- "Our first concern is for the health
of the patients,'' he said. "We are working to determine the risk,
if any, the patients face and we will do whatever is medically appropriate
to support them.''
-
- Okkerse said SmithKline had intended
to notify patients and their physicians in advance of "a public notification,''
but noted that the story had been broken by the media before the company
could do so.
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- SmithKline said letters would be sent
to all individuals and their physicians who had blood drawn at the site,
and that free follow-up blood tests would be offered to them. The company
also said it was establishing a telephone call centre to answer patient
inquiries.
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