The Beaver Dam Community Hospital suspended use of products from a company linked to the meningitis outbreak long before a voluntary recall. On Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration announced that Ameridose LLC in Westborough, Massachusetts has voluntarily recalled all of its unexpired products in circulation. The recall is not based on reports of patients with infections associated with any of Ameridose’s products, but was recommended by the FDA after preliminary findings from an inspection of Ameridose’s facility raised concerns about a lack of sterility assurance for products produced at and distributed by the facility. Ameridose is the sister company of The New England Compounding Center, whose drugs have been implicated in hundreds of fungal infections and 28 deaths nationwide. While no impurities were discovered during an inspection of the Ameridose facility, investigators identified shortcomings in sterility testing procedures, and the recall was agreed to, according to the FDA, “out of an abundance of caution.” Beaver Dam Community Hospital President and CEO Kim Miller says they quarantined all Ameridose products in stock on October 10, three full weeks before the October 31 voluntary recall, as a precautionary action. Miller commended her staff saying they are “trained to identify and act quickly when alerted to this type of situation.”
