“Greed, ignorance, and laziness” are behind medical injection dangers in US, says official

Dangerous injection practices by healthcare providers in the United States have caused at least 49 infectious outbreaks since 2001, a new report has found, putting 150 000 people at risk of diseases ranging from HIV to hepatitis and drug resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Two thirds of the dangerous injections were given in just the past four years, it says.

The findings, published by the newspaper USA Today,1 come on the heels of a nationwide outbreak of more than 650 fungal infections related to tainted drugs used across 19 states, resulting in 372 cases of meningitis and 39 deaths.

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which provided the data to USA Today, said that the numbers in the …