Tagged: meningitis

POMONA – The Rockland County Department of Health announced on Monday an investigation into the death from Meningitis of a 12-year-old Rockland girl who attended St. Gregory’s School. Officials explained preventative measures and means to reach out to those who might have been exposed.

“I want to stress that we are responding, and we are responding quickly and appropriately,” Rockland Commissioner of Health Kathy Henry said.

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) — A bankruptcy court judge has ordered the homes of the owners of a Massachusetts pharmacy seized as they face lawsuits related to a nationwide meningitis outbreak.

The homes' combined value was estimated at about $21 million at the time of the January order, filed with the court Wednesday.

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) — An attorney says a Massachusetts pharmacy blamed for a nationwide meningitis outbreak paid out more than $70 million to its owners and their other companies in the last six years.

Creditors' attorney David Molton made the disclosure Thursday at a U.S. Bankruptcy Court hearing. At the hearing, Judge Henry Boroff gave a committee of creditors the right to seek a freeze on the New England Compounding Center's assets.

Molton had argued the company had a history of removing its assets.

Republicans in the state Legislature in Massachusetts are calling for the departure of JudyAnn Bigby, the state's health and human services secretary.

In a letter sent on Thursday to Gov. Deval Patrick, House Republicans cited "poor management" in the aftermath of two recent crises: The alleged tampering with drug tests at a former Department of Public Health lab, and a deadly outbreak of fungal meningitis linked to a Framingham compounding pharmacy that was regulated by the state.

A government watchdog group is calling on the Food and Drug Administration to re-inspect more than a dozen specialty pharmacies with prior records of violations, in light of a recent deadly outbreak tied to compounded drugs.

Contaminated pain injections from a Massachusetts compounding pharmacy have been blamed for fungal meningitis that has killed 36 people and sickened more than 500, according to federal health officials.