In defense of Seattle Children’s after HIV, hepatitis warning
Aug 27, 2015, 12:54 PM | Updated: Oct 14, 2024, 9:15 am
Taken from Wednesday’s edition of The David Boze Show on AM 770 KTTH.
Seattle Children’s Hospital’s Bellevue Clinic is under fire because of a risk of various diseases including Hepatitis B, C, and HIV after concerns about the sterilization of their equipment came up.
“We want to be the best and the safest children’s hospital in the country and the only way you do that is when you notice that there is an issue, be open about it, notify, learn from it and make sure it doesn’t happen again,” said Dr. Mark Del Becccaro, Seattle Children’s Chief Medical Officer.
It’s getting all sorts of headlines and, because it deals with children, I suspect it will go nationwide. I just want to quickly make a defense.
Rather than hype this up, I would say this, I like their attitude. I like the fact that they’re coming forward. What happened was they noticed there was some debris on equipment. In other words, biological leftover material. Microscopic in all likelihood, just tiny amounts, after all their scrubbing and sterilizing.
In this case, they were surprised because it was supposed to be gone. They say the risk is incredibly low, but if you read The Seattle Times piece on it, you discover, this equipment went through a lot of sterilization techniques. It went through great heat, it went through a scrubbing, it went through a steaming to basically fry any microbes that might be in existence.
I would say the odds of anyone getting sick from this are almost zero, but they are just being extra cautious, which I think is laudable rather than worthy of freaking out.
Taken from Wednesday’s edition of The David Boze Show on AM 770 KTTH.
JR
