CNN 2010-04-28

Well, we take so many things for granted. Employees will wash their hands before making your food. Police and firefighters will come when you call them and doctors who poke¹ and prod² you are using clean instruments. Well, hold off on that last one. One Canadian hospital is warning patients about a potentially deadly problem that went unchecked for nearly two years. Louise Heartland has the outrage³.

‘The Hepatitis B, Hep C or HIV.’

Those are examples of blood illnesses the Vancouver Island Health Authority says up to 500 patients may have been exposed to after being treated with a tainted⁴ piece of surgical⁵ equipment. Vic General made the discovery after staff noticed a cloudiness in the cleaning solution. It’s regularly used to sterilize⁶ endoscopes, a snake-like diagnostic tool used to examine and detect problems with the liver, pancreas and gall⁷ bladder. They found nothing suspicious in regular screenings but after a more details swab test, staff discovered something much more serious.

‘During that process, we discovered some, a small amount of residue⁸ in one of the ports on the scope that’s likely to be blood. And that was remaining after the cleaning process was complete.’

Specialized⁹ staff cleaned the instruments but the health authority says the scopes need to be soaked right after a procedure but that may not have happened in this case allowing blood to dry.

‘We have changed our process, er, such that there will not be any drying of the instruments that they have to be soaked after use, prior to cleaning. ’

The Health Authority says that it stopped using the equipment after the discovery in February. Days later, a patient returned to the hospital, three days after a procedure with a bacterial¹⁰ infection, linked to the endoscope.

‘He was very ill. The procedure was a palliative measure in his case. And we treated his bacterial infection. He went home. He has subsequently died from his illness, not from the bacterial infection.’

Bacterial infections present within days of procedures. The concern now is viral infections which have a much longer incubation period. Those viral infections include hepatitis and HIV. At-risk patients who underwent procedures with one of the four suspect scopes would have been operated on between June 2008 and January of this year.

‘The risks- I would stress that the risks are very low. And the risks from the literature are around one in 30 million procedures. So we're very unlikely to find any.’

BC’s health minister says it’s unfortunate, but says mistakes do happen.

‘So what you always have to do is be constantly trying to improve performance, have checks in place and make sure you are as careful you can possibly be but you will never eliminate the risk altogether. ’

A sentiment echoed by the Health Authority which warns this could happen again.

‘We cannot say that that’s 100%, that there’s no risk, neither can we say that this cleaning failure was a single event.’
 

1 poke   

n.刺，戳，袋；vt.拨开，刺，戳；vi.戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢

参考例句：

• We never thought she would poke her nose into this.想不到她会插上一手。
• Don't poke fun at me.别拿我凑趣儿。

2 prod   

vt.戳，刺；刺激，激励

参考例句：

• The crisis will prod them to act.那个危机将刺激他们行动。
• I shall have to prod him to pay me what he owes.我将不得不催促他把欠我的钱还给我。

3 outrage   

n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒

参考例句：

• When he heard the news he reacted with a sense of outrage.他得悉此事时义愤填膺。
• We should never forget the outrage committed by the Japanese invaders.我们永远都不应该忘记日本侵略者犯下的暴行。

4 tainted   

adj.腐坏的；污染的；沾污的；感染的v.使变质( taint的过去式和过去分词 )；使污染；败坏；被污染，腐坏，败坏

参考例句：

• The administration was tainted with scandal. 丑闻使得政府声名狼藉。
• He was considered tainted by association with the corrupt regime. 他因与腐败政府有牵连而名誉受损。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 surgical   

adj.外科的，外科医生的，手术上的

参考例句：

• He performs the surgical operations at the Red Cross Hospital.他在红十字会医院做外科手术。
• All surgical instruments must be sterilised before use.所有的外科手术器械在使用之前，必须消毒。

6 sterilize   

vt.使不结果实；使绝育；使无效；杀菌，消毒

参考例句：

• Antiseptic is used to sterilize the skin before giving an injection.杀菌剂被用于在注射前给皮肤消毒。
• He pricks the blister on his heel with a sterilize needle.他用一根消过毒的针扎破他脚后跟上的水泡。

7 gall   

v.使烦恼，使焦躁，难堪；n.磨难

参考例句：

• It galled him to have to ask for a loan.必须向人借钱使他感到难堪。
• No gall,no glory.没有磨难，何来荣耀。

8 residue   

n.残余，剩余，残渣

参考例句：

• Mary scraped the residue of food from the plates before putting them under water.玛丽在把盘子放入水之前先刮去上面的食物残渣。
• Pesticide persistence beyond the critical period for control leads to residue problems.农药一旦超过控制的临界期，就会导致残留问题。

9 specialized   

adj.专门的，专业化的

参考例句：

• There are many specialized agencies in the United Nations.联合国有许多专门机构。
• These tools are very specialized.这些是专用工具。

10 bacterial   

a.细菌的

参考例句：

• Bacterial reproduction is accelerated in weightless space. 在失重的空间，细菌繁殖加快了。
• Brain lesions can be caused by bacterial infections. 大脑损伤可能由细菌感染引起。