INFECTION FEARS RECALL 2011 CASE

Tuesday’s Ottawa Public Health warning about an equipment-cleaning lapse at a Stittsville medical clinic echoes an earlier, potentially more serious case.

In 2011, Ottawa Public Health sent an unprecedented 6,800 letters to former patients of Dr. Christiane Farazli, warning them to get tested for HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis A, similar to the letters being sent to some patients of Stittsville’s Main Street Family Medicine Centre. They were at risk of potential infection, public health officials said at the time.

In a report, the College of Physicians and Surgeons accused Farazli of using unsterilized instruments and subjecting patients to “gross crosscontamination” from a dirty scope, among other things.

The college said patients who underwent procedures at her Carling Avenue clinic were at a “very real risk of significant harm.

“For more than 10 years you practised with blatant disregard for the safety of your patients and ignorance of the fundamental principles of infection control,” the college wrote.

Farazli agreed to never practise medicine again after the college found her unprofessional and incompetent.

The college also found that Farazli failed to provide patients with enough sedation to be comfortable during procedures such as colonoscopies and persisted with a procedure in one case despite a patient’s request to stop due to unbearable pain.

An inspection by Ottawa Public Health found she used improper cleaning procedures for patients treated between April 2002 and June 2011. The sterilization lapses were found during a routine inspection.