Dr. Dipak Desai Surrenders License in Hepatitis Scare

In the fall of 2001 I was leaving on an extended trip and went to the family physician for the usual shots and prescriptions for malaria etc. As I was leaving, he gave me a dozen individually wrapped syringes. If I had to visit a doctor during my travels, he suggested that I use only these syringes.

I had never taken this precaution on my earlier travels. When asked, he told me that five of his patients who had recently returned from India had acquired hepatitis (both chronic and acute) and were under his treatment.

Hepatitis is a viral inflammation of the liver. It can be acute or chronic.  The former last  up to six months and the latter lasts longer, sometimes indefinitely. 

One of the prime causes of its spread is through unclean syringes. And unclean syringes also cause HIV-aids.

K. P. Nayyar broke this news story in the Telegraph yesterday:

An Indian American doctor is at the centre of what is emerging to be America’s biggest medical malpractice scandal.

As many as 40,000 people may have been infected with the deadly hepatitis C virus or HIV from a Las Vegas clinic, owned by Dr Dipak Desai, which has been reusing syringes and medical vials for nearly four years.

Local TV crews are now descending on his luxurious home with a swimming pool, spa and multiple fireplaces, for which Desai and his wife paid $3.4 million (Rs 13.6 crore) with what may now turn out to be tainted money.

The scandal has created a frenzy among lawyers who have begun chasing ambulances and taking out television and newspaper advertisements seeking out infected patients in what could be a huge class action suit against the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada. Desai owns 65 per cent of the medical facility.

Nevada authorities have issued a health notification urging thousands of people who have used Desai’s facilities to get tested for infections.

So far, six cases of hepatitis C have been confirmed. Six of his facilities have been closed.

Dr. Desai is a politically savvy operator who owns several medical facilities in Nevada, is a contributor  to both Democrats and Republicans and is friendly with the Nevada Governor, and sits on the Governor's Commission on Healthcare. According to AP:

He released a statement expressing concern for the patients and assuring the public the problems had been corrected. He later took out a full-page ad in Sunday's edition of the Las Vegas Review-Journal insisting that needles had not been reused and that the chances of contracting an infection at the center in most of the last four years were "extremely low."

In bulk purchase a syringe costs less than 10 cents each!

"I find it baffling, frankly, that in this day and age anyone would think it was safe to reuse a syringe," said Michael Bell, associate director for infection control at the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While Dr. Dipak Desai does not show up on this list of prominent NRI Indians his activities would cast a long and dark shadow over the vast majority of law abiding Indians in the U.S.

But that damage can be alleviated. What cannot be undone is the harm done to individuals and families. Some of them would have to pay with their lives for this penny-saving short cut.

The FBI has launched a probe into alleged Medicare fraud, and the Nevada State Board has announced that Dr. Dipak Desai has "voluntarily agreed to stop practicing medicine, at the board’s request until the board’s investigation into the operations and allegations concerning the center has been completed."