HIGH PRAIRIE, Alta. - Nearly completed tests on almost 1,400 patients have yet to turn up someone who contracted hepatitis or HIV from exposure to contaminated syringes, health officials in northern Alberta said Thursday.
"There has been no identified link between any infection and the incident," Deb Guerette, spokeswoman for the Peace Country Health Region, said in an interview.
The syringe scare flared last October when health officials announced testing was required because some nurses at the High Prairie Health Complex had for years routinely injecting drugs into intravenous lines with the same syringe.
Guerette said test results for 1,000 of 1,380 patients are in and so far there have been 30 cases of infection.
"There were some positive test results expected," she said.
"There are existing rates of these infections in this community of about three per cent. And that's approximately right around what we have discovered in our testing."
Some of the 30 had the infections before going to the hospital or display symptoms because they were vaccinated and still have the antibodies.
"There's still a lot of followup work to do."
Officials are still trying to locate 80 patients but have failed so far because they have either moved or can't be contacted.
"We are still trying, but we are running out of methods to exhaust," said Guerette.
Patients are being notified of their test results by registered mail and the province will get a final report later this year, she said.
Gerry Predy, Alberta's acting chief medical health officer, said Thursday the early results have been encouraging.
"The risk here, I think, is low but (the province) felt the risk assessment was high enough to go through this process.
"We're hoping, of course, they won't find anybody who has been infected (by the syringes)."
The injections were performed by registered nurses and licensed practical nurses, who both receive training on safe injection practices.
The concern was that intravenous lines sometimes have blood seeping into them from a vein. If a syringe is reused, a new patient could come in contact with the blood of the previous patient and possibly inherit an infection.
Some of the syringes were reused in endoscopy procedures, during which a fibreglass scope is inserted into a patient's bowel or stomach and beams back video images to scan for cancers, colitis and digestive problems. Prior to the procedure, the patient is sedated by a syringe inserted into the intravenous line.
Alberta's Quality Health Council is investigating the root causes of the breakdown.
Similar concerns also cropped up in Lloydminster on the Alberta-Saskatchewan boundary, and in other parts of Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
