Friday, November 2, 2012

3 more suits filed in Roanoke Circuit Court over tainted shots


Three people from Alleghany County said they were sickened by tainted steroid injections.

Related: Cave Spring athlete is latest to contract meningitis Three more lawsuits were filed this week in Roanoke Circuit Court by back-pain patients who claim they were made sick by tainted steroid injections.
Nine such suits have now been filed in Roanoke since a deadly national outbreak of fungal meningitis was announced Oct. 3. The outbreak has been linked to tainted steroid injections, and, as of Friday, is responsible for 386 illnesses and 28 deaths nationally. Two of those deaths, and 46 cases of sickness, have occurred in Virginia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Friday's suits came from three patients in Alleghany County - Kimberly Brown, Forrest Linthicum and Denia Taliaferro - who said they received injections between August and September. They soon began to experience symptoms consistent with fungal meningitis, the suits said.
Each of the three lawsuits filed seeks $5 million in damages. All three name New England Compounding Center, the Massachusetts firm that produced the steroid, and Insight Imaging, the Roanoke outpatient clinic where the plaintiffs said they received the shots.
The nine lawsuits filed over the past two weeks seek between $5 million and $10 million apiece. All of them name New England Compounding, and all but one also name Insight Imaging. Spokespeople for both companies have declined to comment on the suits or the outbreak.
This outbreak of meningitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord and the lining of the brain, has sickened or killed people in more than a dozen states. Each victim had received a steroid shot, mostly for back pain. Federal health officials matched the shots produced by New England Compounding to the outbreak after finding a deadly fungus in more than 50 unopened vials there, but have not said how the shots were contaminated, according to the Associated Press
Source found here

No comments: