This week State Senator Kemp Hannon (R-Garden City) held a hearing on why the New York State Health Department failed to inform patients for three years that they may have been inadvertently exposed to life threatening viruses during medical treatments.

The Health Department had known that Dr. Harvey Finkelstein had been reusing syringes in his Nassau County practice for three years. Although the health department counseled the doctor to change his procedures, it took three years for them to tell all his patients that they might have been exposed to hepatitis and HIV. Given that those viruses could have been be transmitted from them to others, that is unconscionable.

The Health Department's defense is that there were no policies in place in regard to making such information public, so the department had to figure out how to proceed. This is clearly hogwash. Any thinking person would understand that time is of the essence is notifying the exposed patients. As someone commented at the hearing, even your local school nurse knows the importance of letting parents know if a child has a contagious illness (or even worse, head lice!). That's simple common sense.

It appears that the Health Department is in need of some new leadership, preferably with a little common sense.

Meg Morgan Norris

Publisher