Thousands of patients at Goshen Hospital in Indiana may have been exposed to HIV, Hepatitis C and Hepatitis B.
What We Know:
- A lack of clean surgical equipment has now potentially exposed many patients to these diseases. According to CNN, one step of the surgical cleaning process was missed which caused the potential exposure.
- Hepatitis B and C both damage the liver and are caused by a blood-borne virus. HIV, human immunodeficiency disease, weakens a person’s entire immune system by destroying the cells that fight infection and disease.
- Between April and September of 2019, there were potentially 1,182 patients who were infected. Those people were notified and offered free tests to check for the viruses.
- The hospital’s president released a statement saying, “While our sterile processing and infectious disease experts believe that the potential transmission of blood-borne viruses between patients is extremely remote, out of an abundance of caution, we want to verify through lab blood tests that patients have not been harmed.”
Any patients with questions or concerns can contact a representative from the Goshen Hospital call center for assistance.
