HIV & Hepatitis scare after endoscopy at a Warrawong Clinic

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDJun 7 2010

Dr Ananya Mandal, MD

The South-Eastern Sydney Illawarra Health Service claims that the risk of contracting blood borne serious viral infections like HIV and Hepatitis are low among patients who had an endoscopy done at a private Warrawong clinic. This clinic came under into the spotlight after investigations started to detect the cause of illness in nine persons who underwent endoscopy. The facility is at Cowper Street, Warrawong run by Dr Zakaria Lakhany and is presently closed.

The Health Service after investigations says that the anesthetic that was given to sedate the patients during the procedure was from vials that had bacterial contamination. This spread could also be linked to inadequate cleaning and sterilization of the endoscopic equipment. Three people who had had an endoscopy done by Dr. Zakaria Lakhany complained of fever and low blood pressure. This could be due to the contaminated anesthetic medication authorities feel.

Public health director, Dr Mark Ferson announced that although the risk of getting the infection over the past 15 years is low, testing is the only way to be sure. “There's a large number of patients who have attended this clinic over the years, so we would like to advise those patients strongly that although their risk is probably small they really should go to their own doctors and have tests done for those three infections Hep C, Hep B and HIV,” he said. He also assured that the nine initial reports have been shown to be negative for any of the viruses. He also said that we must not rule out that some of the vast number of patients could have Hepatitis C from the community and blaming it on the facility would be inappropriate. “There's some background infections, particularly hepatitis C in the community anyway but when we're dealing with so many people it seems likely on the basis of probabilities that some people will have actually acquired the infection this way,” he said.

At present the Wollongong branch of Slater & Gordon is gearing up to launch a lawsuit against the practice on behalf of seven of the patients who were given the bad anesthetic, said Melinda Griffiths, the practice group leader at the branch. She confirmed that these seven individuals are still ill and unable to return to work. She also said that getting tested for a possible HIV infection and waiting for the results was also traumatic for these people.