Lawsuit filed to force UNLV to reopen maternal-HIV clinic
A lawsuit filed Thursday on behalf of a 4-year-old HIV-positive girl seeks to force UNLV to reopen a maternal HIV program that was suspended more than a month ago.
“They’re holding the program in abeyance at the risk of children getting the health care that they need,” said attorney Jacob Hafter.
The Nevada Care Program, which is housed at UNLV’s School of Community Health Sciences, was temporarily suspended by Dean Shawn Gerstenberger on Sept. 15 with no warning to the medical personnel who run the program and the patients under their care.
The emergency petition says the closure has prevented the 4-year-old patient listed as Jane Doe, who has a complex case of HIV that is resistant to most treatments, from receiving the “specialized care” she needs. She is also at risk of running out of lifesaving medications, according to the petition.
The petition further states that the child and other patients cannot obtain refills on their HIV-specific medications, as their primary care physicians are “not competent nor comfortable with prescribing this complex medical regimen.”
Under the direction of Dr. Echezona Ezeanolue, the program provided outpatient HIV primary care services to low-income, vulnerable and medically underserved women, infants, children and youth. The university said last week that 62 patients are served by the program.
Gerstenberger, also the acting dean of UNLV’s new medical school, has said little about the closure, saying only that an administrative audit is underway. President Len Jessup previously stated that school officials noticed “irregularities” with the way the grant funding for the program was being administered.
The complaint also alleges that Gerstenberger had told Dina Patel, a nurse practitioner with the program, that the clinic was being operated “in a good way,” and that he “had not heard anything bad about the program in any way, shape or form.” Salaries for the program are paid for by a federal grant, which was recently renewed for three years.
“He’s acknowledged that there’s no complaints about the program, no complaints about patient care, no complaints about how it was being administered,” Hafter said. “This program needs to be reopened. If they don’t want to, they should terminate the grant to allow the individuals operating it to find another sponsoring institution.”
Jessup and Gerstenberger did not respond to a request for comment, but the university issued a statement.
“The lawsuit has no merit and is based on inaccuracies and misinformation, including the false premise that the clinic is closed and that care is not available to the plaintiff and other patients,” the statement read.
Last week the university began routing patients to other facilities, including University Medical Center’s Wellness Center, and hired a case manager to assist patients.
The maternal HIV program is one part of a clinic at the UNLV School of Medicine, which is still operational.
A hearing is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Nov. 2 in the Clark County District Court.
Contact Natalie Bruzda at nbruzda@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3897. Follow @NatalieBruzda on Twitter.
Amended Writ Petition in UNLV HIV lawsuit by Las Vegas Review-Journal on Scribd
