Health service downplays blood infection risk

The South-Eastern Sydney Illawarra Health Service believes there is a low risk that patients who underwent an endoscopy at a private Warrawong clinic have contracted a blood infection.

The clinic, run by Dr Zakaria Lakhany on Cowper Street, has ceased operating after coming under investigation last month when nine people fell ill within hours of having similar procedures.

The health service says the investigation revealed anaesthetic was administered from vials contaminated with bacteria and inadequate cleaning and sterilisation of endoscopic equipment.

Its public health director, Dr Mark Ferson, says the risk that patients over the past 15 years have been exposed to HIV and hepatitis B or C is low, but testing is essential as a precaution.

"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.

Dr Ferson says the initial nine patients are in the process of being tested for the infections but no-one to date has been diagnosed with the viruses.

"That will take a little while to come out because the tests need to be done a certain time after the time that the exposure may have occurred but there is the possibility that some people might have actually contracted the infection in this way," he said.

"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."

Melinda Griffith of the firm Slater & Gordon, which are representing seven of the nine patients, says they are still very sick and seeking compensation.

"One of the gentlemen who's only very young - he's 28 years of age actually - had the same sort of symptoms as having a mild stroke and has been left with left-sided weakness which continues on a daily basis for him," she said.

"A lot of them have been unable to return to full-time work yet because they're still suffering from the symptoms of the infection."