Blog Posting #8

There was an article from the Associated Pressed dated March 5 in which 40,000 people in the Las Vegas area may have gotten sick. This clinic is accused of reusing syringes and vials of medication for over four years. What is more sickening is that the workers were told by management to reuse the vials and syringes in order to cut costs. The article reports that a 67 year old man was the first to report this case. He noticed he was getting sick, losing weight, his urine was turning dark and his stomach hurt. Of course he and other people would never think that when they are having these symptoms that they should be tested for hepatitis and the he may also be exposed to HIV.

It wasn’t until “health inspectors observed a clinic employee use the same syringe twice to extract anesthesia from a single-dose vial”. When I read this article I was so, so disturbed that I couldn’t find anything else to put on my wiki because it was something that is so horrible. I have so many questions that I hardly know where to start. 1) are the clinic employees just as responsible as management when it comes to reusing the vials and syringes? 2) when this goes to trial (I wouldn’t see why it won’t) in addition to the owners, will the employees, and other parties that were aware received monetary compensation also be held responsible? 3) I can see lots of lawsuits as a result of this case, but how do these people ever trust the health care system again?