Health authorities in Quebec are requesting that 1,000 endoscopy and colonoscopy patients at Hotel Dieu hospital in Levis undergo HIV and hepatitis B and C screening after learning that equipment used in these procedures had not been adequately sterilized, CBC News reports.
 

Officials at the hospital, located across the St. Lawrence River from Quebec City, say the risk of infection is small, but the hospital cannot take the chance someone might have been infected with a communicable disease.

Hotel Dieu’s head of gastroenterology, Dr. Remi Lavoie, said that in mid-April hospital staff discovered a leak in one of its linear endoscopes instruments used to help diagnose cancer or gastroenterological problems, according to CBC.

After tests were performed on the device, it was learned that hospital staff had failed to properly disinfect it for almost eight years. During that time — between June 14, 2005 and May 1, 2013 — nearly 1,000 patients there came into contact with that endoscope.

Hotel Dieu is asking all of them to undergo tests for HIV and hepatitis B and C.