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EXETER —An informational meeting about hepatitis C will be held at the Town Hall Tuesday starting at 6 p.m.
The meeting, titled “Hepatitis C: Medical and Legal Information Night,” is scheduled for Tuesday, June 26 from 6 to 8 p.m.
The meeting is being put on by state Rep. Lee Quandt. R-Exeter and a recently formed patient rights group, The Patient Speaks.
To date, 19 people and Exeter Hospital employee have tested positive for the virus since it was discovered in May. The state Department of Health and Human Services announced that drug diversion by the hospital employee was the likely cause of the outbreak tied to hospital’s cardiac catheterization laboratory.
The panel of speakers include: Quandt; former Republican state rep. Elenore Casey Crane of Nashua; Dr. Raymond Chung, medical director of the liver transplant program at Massachusetts General Hospital; and Domenic Paolini, a Boston-based attorney and former cardiac surgeon.
Paolini, who has been critical of the state’s investigation of the Exeter Hospital outbreak, and Crane co-founded The Patient Speaks.
Topics to be covered at the meeting include additional information about hepatitis C, treatment options, advancements in hepatitis C treatments, and legal and insurance information, according to Quandt.
The state Department of Health and Human Services held an informational meeting about the outbreak on June 15 but Quandt didn’t feel that it was enough.
“No one is touching the human aspect of what it means to have hepatitis C,” Quandt said. “It’s time we start looking out for individuals.”
Quandt called Chung one of the country’s leading experts on the liver and said he will offer a lot of good information about the disease and treatments.
The Patient Speaks is scheduled to launch its Web site on June 22 at www.thepatientspeaks.com