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Chief Health Officer

Hepatitis C lookback

Information Update

This is to update information contained in the Chief Health Officer alerts of 23 April 2010 and 21 May 2010 regarding the hepatitis C cluster associated with the Croydon Day Surgery (CDS).

The Department has been undertaking a ‘lookback’ program to identify all women who attended CDS between 2006 and 2009 and who had a procedure involving the doctor implicated as the source of the cluster of infections. Over 3000 women have now been contacted, however there are some more women to be contacted and we will continue to try to locate them.

As an added precaution and for the sake of completeness, I have decided to extend this lookback to three other facilities where the anaesthetist also worked during 2008 and 2009 as to date, all of the matched cases of hepatitis C had their procedures during this period.

It must be emphasized that the Department of Health has not found any evidence of clusters of cases at any of these other facilities using its notification system. However, in order to be sure there are no additional cases from these facilities, patients treated by this anaesthetist during this period will also be contacted and advised to be tested.

The relevant dates and facilities are:

As we identify women in scope, we are requesting that they arrange to see their general practitioner for pre-test counselling and testing, if possible. If the woman does not have a general practitioner or would prefer not to see him/her, then the Department is offering appointments at our offices.

Further information

Yours sincerely

Dr John Carnie
Chief Health Officer

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PDF icon News release: Update on Hepatitis C Lookback - 25 October 2010 (26kb, pdf)

Hepatitis C lookback - Information update - October 2010