NSW: Report into meningococcal death due within three weeks

AAP General News (Australia)
08-21-2006
NSW: Report into meningococcal death due within three weeks

Health authorities in NSW say a panel of experts should take about three weeks .. to
establish whether the life of a Sydney teenage meningococcal victim could have been saved.

NSW Health Director General ROBYN KRUK has announced the makeup of a panel .. to investigate
the circumstances surrounding the death of 18-year-old JEHAN NASSIF on Friday.

Ms NASSIF died just days after she had made a hospital visit to her boyfriend's cousin
.. who was suffering from meningococcal disease.

The boyfriend .. GEORGE KHOUZAME .. had been given antibiotics because he had been
in close contact with his cousin during a holiday to Greece .. but was told Ms NASSIF
didn't need medication.

Ms KRUK says the inquiry will consider whether there's a need to change national health
guidelines .. which state that only people who have had prolonged contact with meningococcal
sufferers should be given precautionary doses of antibiotics.

The inquiry will also investigate why Ms NASSIF wasn't taken to hospital .. when an
ambulance was first called to her home in the early hours of Friday morning.

Ambulance officers say Ms NASSIF refused to be transported to hospital .. but her family
say this was because she'd been told there'd be a two to three-hour wait at Auburn Hospital.

Hours later .. the family called the ambulance service again and Ms NASSIF died after
being taken to Bankstown Hospital.

Ms KRUK says the panel investigating Ms NASSIF's death will include infectious diseases
expert Professor LYN GILBERT and Victorian Human Services Department Communicable Disease
chief Dr ROSEMARY LESTER.

Barrister and former NSW Health Care Complaints Commission deputy commissioner GAIL
FURNESS will also sit on the panel.

AAP RTV pj/was/tm/cp

KEYWORD: MENINGOCOCCAL (SYDNEY)

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