A physician from Bavaria denies having infected his patients in rows with hepatitis C. The anesthetist himself suffered from the disease and is said to have injected himself with medication and used the same syringes on patients. His lawyers contradict this presentation, as the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" and "Die Welt" report consistently.
According to her client had used syringes from the clinic, which had been used in operations. The anesthetist did not use the syringes again in patients and thus could not be the source of infection.
He himself had learned about the disease in May and has since healed. "There is no plausible explanation of how the infection route should have taken place," said Christian Kanth of the law firm Herrmann and colleagues on the "world".
Meanwhile, the physician no longer works in the Donau-Ries Clinic in Donauwörth. When the allegations against him became known, the health department enrolled all patients who were treated by the doctor. In the meantime, the hepatitis C virus has been detected in 51 patients.
Diagnosis Hepatitis C
Hepatitis C is a liver infection caused by hepatitis C viruses. Normally, the infection is only transmitted via blood contact. For example, there is also a risk of infection during unhygienic conditions during tattooing. In Germany, 400,000 to 500,000 people are infected with the hepatitis C virus.
According to Deutscher Leberhilfe, hepatitis C infection rarely causes symptoms at first, but in 20 to 50 percent it heals on its own within the first half year. In the remaining victims, however, the virus remains in the body, they develop a chronic liver inflammation. Without treatment, long-term consequences such as cirrhosis or liver cancer threaten.
Medicines are expensive
There is a therapy on the market that can cure hepatitis C in a majority of patients and with relatively few side effects. The drug is extremely expensive. Even doctors in Germany are therefore sometimes difficult to prescribe the substance.
Aid organizations have lodged an appeal against the patent of the pharmaceutical company Gilead on the active substance before the European Patent Office in Munich in order to make it accessible to more patients.