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Hunt County to Public: No Meningitis Cases

CDC

GREENVILLE - As the tainted steroid scare causing an outbreak of fungal meningitis across the U.S. expands, officials at Hunt Regional Healthcare say they’ve not purchased or used the drug.

The meningitis outbreak has been linked to steroid shots for back pain. The medication, made by a specialty pharmacy in Massachusetts, has been recalled. 

The latest count Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicated 214 people had been affected in 15 states, including Texas.

Rodney Gibson, R.Ph., pharmacy manager said, "The Hunt Regional Medical Center Pharmacy would like to assure staff, patients and the public that we have never purchased any lots of the methylprednisolone acetate product from the company, New England Compounding Center, which made and distributed the product."

Identified patients with meningitis had procedures between July 30 and Sept. 28, 2012.

On Sunday, CDC released this list of healthcare facilities that received three recalled lots of the tainted drug on September 26. The two in Texas are Dallas Back Pain Management and Harris Methodist Southlake Center.

Related Content
  • The government has named 75 medical facilities that received a potentially contaminated drug suspected of infecting 47 patients with meningitis nationwide.
  • Nearly two-dozen states are watching for new cases of a rare kind of meningitis, caused by fungal contamination in injections for back pain. The outbreak apparently started when a Massachusetts compounding company sent out 17,000 doses of infected injections for back pain. Daniel Potter of member station WPLN reports five people have died and dozens of others are sick.
  • Little is known about how to diagnose and treat this kind of meningitis, which was caused by a tainted drug. And the investigation into how the drug contamination occurred is revealing a spectacular failure of consumer protection.