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London patients may have been exposed to HIV and hepatitis because of risky practices at London clinics run by the nation’s largest home-care provider, ParaMed, public health officials said Monday.

While the associate medical officer of health says the risks are very low that any patients at the clinics were given a blood-borne disease, ParaMed says they are notifying 3001 patients who may have been subjected to risks that public health says could have been eliminated had clinics sterilized and properly disinfected scissors, forceps and probes.

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Those risky practices were standard at the “flex” clinics from the time ParaMed opened then in 2008 until public health inspectors discovered what was being done in July, staff there told inspectors.

Patients were exposed to that risk for ten years, because while Ontario requires public health agencies in Ontario to regularly inspect everything from tattoo parlors to restaurants, the government only allows medical clinics to be inspected by public health if there is a complaint and the first one was not made until July 18.