CONCORD, N.H. — A week after a traveling medical technician was charged with causing a hepatitis C outbreak in New Hampshire, a dozen hospitals in seven other states were still scrambling Thursday to identify victims.
As officials filled in the gaps on David Kwiatkowski’s resume, a hospital official in Arizona said he had been fired from her facility in April 2010, after he was found unresponsive in a men’s locker room with syringes and needles. He was treated at the hospital, and tests showed he had cocaine and marijuana in his system, said Monica Bowman, chief executive officer of the Arizona Heart Hospital.
Kwiatkowski, 33, is accused of stealing anesthetic drugs from Exeter Hospital in New Hampshire and contaminating syringes used on patients. Thirty patients have been diagnosed with the same strain of hepatitis C that he carries.
Testing has been recommended for 4,700 people in New Hampshire, and officials are determining who should be tested elsewhere. Health officials have confirmed that Kwiatkowski worked in Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania before being hired in New Hampshire in April 2011.
U.S. Attorney John Kacavas said Thursday that although other health care workers have been prosecuted for diverting drugs and infecting patients, this case stands apart.
“Because of his employment as a traveler, working for agencies and being sent around the country to various states, it really has tentacles all over the country,” he said. “Its scope is unprecedented and scary.”
