Comments (14) | Add a comment
Hepatitis group has eye on trial
-
Steve Langan
Tools
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
The head of a national patient advocacy group heard Monday how a virus has changed the lives of a couple whose civil lawsuit is the first to go to trial in the aftermath of a Las Vegas hepatitis outbreak.
The couple no longer have sexual relations, said attorney Will Kemp, who represents Lorraine Chanin, whose husband, Henry, contracted hepatitis while having a colonoscopy at a local clinic.
"She even changes the bed linen now with gloves on," Kemp told Steve Langan, executive director of the Nebraska-based Hepatitis Outbreaks National Organization for Reform, or HONOReform.
Kemp's comments came outside the courtroom on the first day of jury selection in the lawsuit filed by the Chanins. Public health investigators say Henry Chanin, the 61-year-old upper school director at The Meadows School, was infected with hepatitis C during a June 2006 colonoscopy at the Desert Shadow Endoscopy Center.
Kemp's information is the sort that Langan says fuels his organization, founded earlier this decade by Nebraskan Evelyn McKnight, who contracted hepatitis C while undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. She used settlement funds to found HONOReform, which public health officials credit as the catalyst behind a new safety campaign beginning in Nevada: The One and Only Campaign, which stresses one needle, one syringe, used only one time.
The Chanins are suing Teva Parenteral Medicines Inc. and Baxter Healthcare Corp., the maker and the distributor of propofol, the anesthetic linked to Southern Nevada's hepatitis C outbreak.
The Chanins' lawsuit contends the companies made and sold propofol bottles that contained five times the amount of drug needed for short procedures such as colonoscopies, which led to clinic workers reusing the vials among patients, spreading disease.
The clinic doctor and nurses named in the lawsuit settled last month.
Kemp said he expects jury selection to take a week at minimum. Langan expects to be there for much of it.
"The effects of these outbreaks are horrifying and staggering," said Langan, who flew to Las Vegas from Omaha early Monday. "That's why we're so serious about our mission -- to ensure that every injection is a safe one. I'm hopeful that this trial will make it totally clear on how vials should be used, and it can be made a strong part of our education materials."
Langan has met with research analyst Tara Thebus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas School of Community Health Sciences, which is working with the state on the new safety campaign. It will make materials on injection safety available to both medical providers and patients.
"We're holding a series of focus groups across the state, pilot testing materials to see how effective they are," Thebus said.
Currently, only Nevada and New York are rolling out the safety program.
"We're lobbying Congress to get this kind of program across the nation," Langan said.
He is meeting this week with several people who contracted hepatitis C and with attorneys and public health officials.
"We want to ensure as much as we can the rights of the patients that were infected," he said.
HONOReform first became known to Nevadans when Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, and Dr. Lawrence Sands of the Southern Nevada Health District asked McKnight to testify during a Legislative Committee on Health Care hearing shortly after the hepatitis outbreak in Las Vegas became public.
With well over 100,000 Americans placed in direct risk of contracting hepatitis, HIV and other blood-borne diseases through more than 35 known outbreaks over the past decade, McKnight said it was clear that there was a breakdown in the injection safety process.
McKnight worked to help develop the Safe Injection Practices Coalition, made up of patient advocacy organizations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and provider associations and societies. In February 2009, that coalition joined Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Las Vegas, and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., to launch The One and Only Campaign.
The materials that will be sent to medical providers in the new One and Only campaign include this information: A 2002 survey done by the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists found that 31 percent of providers indicated that they reuse needles and/or syringes on the same patient.
Ben Kieckhefer, a spokesman for the Nevada State Health Division, said the new safety campaign should go into effect this year.
"There is clearly a need for re-education," Langan said. "This is something that every health care professional is taught not to do, and yet they do it anyway. And we want patients to be armed with information."
Patients will be given materials that include these questions for their medical providers:
"Will there be a new needle, new syringe, and a new vial for this procedure or injection?"
"Can you tell me how you prevent the spread of infections in your facility?"
Contact reporter Paul Harasim at pharasim@ reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2908.
Trending topics:
Comments
Terms & Conditions
The following comments are provided by readers and are the sole responsiblity of the authors. The Review-Journal does not review comments before publication nor guarantee their accuracy. By publishing a comment here you agree to abide by the comment policy. If you see a comment that violates the policy, please use the Report Abuse button.
Some comments may not display immediately due to an automatic filter. These comments will be reviewed within 24 hours. Please do not submit a comment more than once.
Note: Comments made by reporters and editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal are presented with a yellow background.
RSS
Twitter
Facebook
Where is little Bobby Eglet? He loves publicity. Maybe he knows he has problems without Howard Awand creating his battle plan. I think Howard is going to be sentenced soon. Bobby has probably bought off Awand and Gage to avoid unfavorable testimony when the time comes. The FBI should not give up their investigation. There are people who know a lot! As soon as Dr. Kabins (or ex-doctor) folded, Awand and Gage; Bobby's firm didn't provide the protective shield like they did for Kabins before. Go see wildwildlaw.blogspot.com
Shel,
I think you hit it exactly. Deep pockets is all this suit is about. The size of the bottles of popofol doesn't matter. What matters is doctors only using 1 needle and 1 syringe for each procedure.
Shel,
I think you hit it exactly. Deep pockets is all this suit is about. The size of the bottles of popofol doesn't matter. What matters is doctors only using 1 needle and 1 syringe for each procedure.
I dont think K is a shill. jest someone who knows what there talking about. I've got friends with this and it seems like most people don't know anything about it.
Gotta quit drinking tho. that much i know.
Final comment. Hep C is not a death sentence for everyone. Only about 10% of those with the disease actually die from it. It can cause liver cancer and cirrosis of the liver but most people with it go on to die of other causes.
Also FYI, not everyone with Hep C is a candidate for the treatment. I am not as my genotype is 1B,one of the most difficult to treat, and have other factors that are not condusive to effective treatment , and my doctor agrees that since I show very little damage to my liver, I can wait for treatment, while other treatments become available that are more successful in treating genotypes 1A and 1B.
So each case of Hep C is different and various things factor into life expectancy and quality of life.
Minor inconvenience? No. I am tired all the time, have to watch what meds I take, what I eat and drink, get plenty of rest and have lots of tests done on a regular basis. I am a lucky one and my gastro doctor has told me that the younger you are when you contract the virus, the lesser the symptoms can be. I was just 21. So these people getting it at an older age are probably at greater risk of liver damage. I also take the herb milk thistle which is thearaputic in reversing liver damage.
FYI, there are many different Hep C support groups in town.
On the one hand, I hope that K's story that it is possible to live for many years with hepatitis C is true. That would be good news, indeed. I wish the Chanins all the best, and hope that the same comes true for them.
On the other hand, I agree with L that the rest of K's post sounds like an attempt to portray living with hepatitis C as a minor inconvenience at worst. Which could certainly be interpreted as an attempt to shill for the drug company, in the context of this lawsuit.
Although it may be possible with modern pharmaceuticals to live a long life despite a life threatening disease, that says nothing about the quality of life. About the very expensive medicines Mr. Chanin will probably have to take forever, and the uncomfortable side effects - even if not life threatening.
Not to mention the emotional stress. Many years ago now, my mother contracted cancer. She was in remission for several years, and could theoretically have lived longer, but the constant fear and uncertainty eventually wore her out. I would be very surprised if the same danger doesn't apply here.
So even if it is possible to live a long time with hepatitis C, and I hope Mr. Chanin does, I still think he has the right to seek justice. Because his life will have changed irrevocably no matter how long he lives.