This story seems to keep getting worse sadly and Tennessee is 
still the hardest hit state. At the CDC they are working hard to notify everyone who could have been exposed. Also the New York Times had some interesting information to add with their interviews with employees on safety and working conditions at the the New England Compounding Center. I think their business is done as last time I updated the deaths were half of what we have now and some patients have had strokes too. Ameridose is another company owned by the same individuals who own NECC. 8 former employees of NECC were interviewed by the paper which had all left prior to the outbreak.
Barry Cadden, the NECC chief pharmacist also lost his license this week for obvious reasons. One former employee said the company encouraged shortcuts even when it could compromise safety and had people who were not pharmacists overseeing drug input which in one case ended up in a double potency of a strong narcotic that was caught before it left the premises. Two employees said speed was always the big concern. One former salesman said it was not uncommon to sell drugs without patients names too, which compounding facilities are required to have as they compound medications for specific patients, so in essence they were almost a drug company of sorts. Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and New Hampshire are the states so far where cases have been reported.
No doubt the compounding business in the future will be under the thumb of the FDA and why they need more money to have a large enough enforcement and inspection arm, which they don’t even come close currently and those in Congress just don’t see the importance it appears. BD
One More Good Reason to Tax the Data Sellers– Create Additional Funding for the NIH and FDA From Sources That Otherwise Are Too Greedy to Share & Contribute
ATLANTA Scattered across the carefully landscaped main 
campus of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are the staff on the front lines fighting a rare outbreak of fungal meningitis: A scientist in a white lab coat peers through a microscope at fungi on a glass slide. In another room, another researcher uses what looks like a long, pointed eye dropper to suck up DNA samples that will be tested for the suspect fungus.
Not far away in another building is the emergency operations center, which is essentially the war room.
There's a low hum of voices as employees work the phones, talking to health officials, doctors and patients who received potentially contaminated pain injections believed to be at the root of the outbreak. Workers sit at rows of computers, gathering data, advising doctors and reaching out to thousands of people who may have been exposed. Overall, dozens of people are working day and night to bring the outbreak under control. Nearly 200 people in more than a dozen states have been sickened, including 15 who have died.
http://www.lohud.com/usatoday/article/1632611?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|News|s
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