Deaths Of Patients On Dialysis Blasted

The deaths of 40 people who underwent dialysis on contaminated machines constituted “one of the biggest health scandals in the country’s history,” Brazil’s influential Roman Catholic church said Monday.

The 40 people who died of toxic hepatitis caused by contaminated water were among 126 patients who underwent dialysis Feb. 10-16 at the Kidney Disease Institute in Caruaru, 1,650 miles northeast of Sao Paulo.

The Pernambuco state health department says the water that ran through the dialysis machines was contaminated with an algae that produced an unidentified strain of toxin that attacked patients’ livers.