From The NY Times:
The city’s Health Department said late last night that it was urgently contacting 4,500 patients treated by a Manhattan doctor after the discovery that three of them were found to have hepatitis C, a virus that can damage or destroy the liver.
The doctor, an anesthesiologist whom health investigators did not identify, administered pain-deadening drugs by needle at 10 Manhattan outpatient centers, including clinics and doctors’ offices, but not at hospitals. The patients were treated between Dec. 1, 2003, and May 1, 2007.
Like many others at this point, I'm trying to figure out how this could happen. First of all, I'm assuming, always a dangerous thing, that they've analyzed the viruses and confirmed that they're all from the same source. Given that assumption, and that they really trace back to this doctor, I'm still not sure how he could gave passed it along three times. Could he or she really have stuck themselves with a needle that then got used in patient care three times that we know about? I'm not mythbuster, but that seems more than a little implausible in this day and age.
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