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StumblePublished Friday, March 7, 2008 | 5:27 p.m.
Updated Thursday, Oct. 30, 2008 | 2:14 p.m.
Here's a partial transcript of a phone interview I conducted today with Dr. Ihsan Azzam, the state's epidemiologist, on The Great Hepatitis Scare of 2008:
(On the risk of infection): "To be honest with you, if I were one of those people, I would want to know my risk is not equal to the general population….The risk is slightly increased….What is the quantification of that risk? It's not clear….it's yet to be seen."
(On the health scare): "I don't like the idea of a public health scare. It's an extremely important thing, urgent to be fixed…..(But) the risk of an individual to contract that does not exceed 1.2 to 4 percent."
(On how it probably happened): "I don't believe it was intentional…It is puzzling…..It is about what you know and what you do. How many of us know we need to wash our hands.? How many do?" (The analogy is that they knew they should not re-use syringes but did not take the time.)
(The future): "I never even thought that something like this may happen, even by mistake…This is an opportunity to start thinking, requiring medical education."
It's not the Great Hepatitis Scare of 2008, it's the Gastro Disaster.
I am disgusted but not surprised by the comments of our Republican administration's state epidemiologist.
If Elliot Spitzer were our state's governor, he would be leading the charge to clean up Nevada's lax regulation of the medical industry immediately. But of course, we have a dithering boob for a governor. Let's hope the Democrats can find someone with chutzpah to run for governor next time.
Perhaps Oscar Goodman. I'll never forget that he had the balls to shut down the Gastroenterology Center when the Republican state administration was afraid to do it.
This is good for those who want to be informed.
Please read what the Indian press have to say about the good doctor.
Over to page right ------->> in the blogs
What kind of parents raised this bunch of GREEDY, ARROGANT, IMMORAL LOWLIFES???? Shame on the nurses and rest of the staff in both suites 165A, 165B, 700 Shadow Ln, you are ALL guilty and have ALL been named in my lawsuit! The least you could do is be an anonymous whistleblower as Jane Morrison so correctly called for in her RJ column.
I was diagnosed with HepC in 2000 and have long suspected a surgical procedure that I had in 1982 as it was common at the time to "sterilize needles in alcohol"(alcohol does not kill HepC)and I jaundiced shortly thereafter. Non specific Hepatitis, thats what they used to call it. Here's the fun part, when I was diagnosed in 2000 and sought medical treatment from a GASTROENTEROLOGIST, he wanted to immediatly start me on interferon treatments(a type of chemo commonly used to treat HepC) I started reaserching, found out my genotype, my viral load, and demanded a liver biopsy. I changed doctors twice and eventually saw a specialist from California. I am one of the lucky ones, I will never get sick from HepC, but had I listened to that first doctor I saw in Henderson, I would have been self injecting expensive, toxic chemicals for a year. He didn't just suggest it,he was insistant. So please, if you get diagnosed, take responsibility for your own health because I found out the hard way that there are doctors out there that are more concerned about the money than your health. And hey, doesn't the doctor that started this viral war own Gastroenterology clinics where newly infected patients would have to go to get that expensive chemo? Things that make ME go hmmmmm!
Trying to blame Governor Gibbons for this lack of oversight is simply stupid. It's been going on for over 7 years. Meanwhile Health District
employees have been blowing their budget on throwing parties for teenagers at casino night clubs to promote no smoking. They've also been
the nanny staters enforcing the no smoking ban.
Take some responsibility Democrats for imposing
more useless bureaucrats with their bloated paychecks and benefits. Time to fire every bureaurat in the Health District and start over.
Now this is simply disgusting. For crying out loud, either Dr. Azzam is also friends with this group of doctors or he is living in complete la la land and oblivious to where medical care is at here in Nevada. This is Anerica Dr. Azzam! His way, our local health department would have let them walk away with a $3,000 fine if they would just put a plan on paper to correct it. I'll be damned if the doctors and nurses didn't know what they were doing was wrong and what health issues could be caused from it, but they did it anyway. Now how long do you think that fine and promise would have had any affect. The next day this clinic would have been back at it. I think we need a new State Epidemiologist also! What kind of person beleives we don't have the right to know? If there wasn't for this coming out in the open "a public health scare" it would never be corrected and it would continue. If it had to happen, and it did have to happen eventually with all that these doctors have done to protect themselves, I am glad it unfolded the way that it did because now they are forced to know, WE MATTER and it will have to made right. The authorities will have to make it right and these doctors will have to start putting some time and energy into the field of work they chose to do and earn the fees they charge. We have every right to know what dangers they put around us and so do the federal entitites such as the Health Departments and Bureau of Investigation. It is doctors like this that took medical care in the State of Nevada to the sloppy greedy state that it is in right now.
All I want to say is may God have mercy on your soul for those who are involved. You all knew better. For the nurses, the reuse of syringes is BASIC nursing I know you knew better. I do believe that you wouldn't use a used syringe on your self OR YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS. I'm hurt that you nurses involved have lower the repetation of nursing. If I worked at a facility that ask me to practice unsafe I would have reported it to the proper authorities. THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR THIS.
P.S
YOU CAN ALL WAYS GET A JOB BUT YOU CAN'T REPLACE A LIFE. AS A NURSE YOU ARE IN CHARGE OF SOME ONE LIFE. IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILTY AS A NURSE TO REPORT UNSAFE PRACTICES AT YOUR WORK PLACE. NO EXCUSES.
These comments by the epidemiologist are in need of revisiting.
I offer the services of our unbiased, non pharmaceutical industry funded charitable organization to get to the heart of this matter.
I absolutely know my team can untangle this knot. We are the first organization dedicated to hepatitis C in the world and we have refused huge amounts of money from the industry to cover up, misinform or sell products under the guise of advocacy.
We are real, honest to goodness grassroots (comprised of professionals) not astro turf organizations funded by industry to train and schmooze government dignitaries to talk of treatment but never prevention. For that, we have no funding. We do it anyway because it just has to be done.
We tell the truth. You cannot save lives or prevent further infections any other way. Even the CDC's educational programs are a "partnership" with the pharmaceutical industry.
No governmental epidemiologist, department, or licensing board has taken on the risks in spas and tattoo establishments. This is not about beauty and art, this is bout science and preventing disease.
If invited, I will, as I have done in other parts of the country, offer presentations and help establish priorities with those the citizens of Las Vegas decide to put feet to fire. Do not let them tell you there are no answers. It blatantly is not so. Revoking a license should be the beginning of protecting you, not a bone thrown so you feel better. You shouldn't feel better. You should feel that more answers need to be revealed to protect you and your families. Recinding a license is a political solution, not a preventative one.
I have the science to back up every statement I make. (www.whyfiles.com tattooing) Our medical director spoke to the NIH Consensus management conference on Hepatitis C.
I have personally presented to Women's Health National Organizations, American Public Health Association (in 2000)and have been invited to convene a panel in 2008. I am invited to speak all over the world, yet have no funds to get there. (Google: thanbey, hepatitis C Outreach Project)
There is NO EXCUSE to remain ignorant any more and let this continue. You have not yet scratched the surface, Las Vegas! And if any city can rise up with one voice, it's you.
Step up to the plate and DEMAND the truth, backed up with science and consumer protection in your mind. And know that greed and the greasing of palms happens every day across this country. It's cloaked in "privately funded" Foundations that suddenly spring out of no where and have access to very important people.
I'm here for you, Las Vegas. All you have to do is ask. I am not a doctor, yet that may very well be my highest qualification.
Teresa Hanbey
Hepatitis C Outreach Project, since 1992
Portland, OR
www.hcop.org blog
It's your children who are greatest risk.