LAHORE, Sept 6: Punjab Health Minister Dr Tahir Ali Javed said on Saturday that a character assassination campaign had been launched against him by his political rivals.

He was commenting on a report appearing in an American newspaper, the World-Herald, according to which the state of Nebraska had filed a case accusing him of negligence and misconduct.

The minister said he would submit a complete reply when he received any notice by the Nebraska state.

A petition, filed by Nebraska’s special assistant attorney-general Roger Brink, contains scores of allegations against the doctor and seeks disciplinary action against him, according to our Washington correspondent.

State health investigators are said to have linked poor infection-control practices at Dr Javed’s former cancer clinic in Fremont, Nebraska, to 99 cases of hepatitis-C diagnosed over the past two years. One patient has died.

The petition outlines 12 reasons for discipline or revocation of Dr Javed’s Nebraska licence. It said Dr Javed was repeatedly informed — as early as November 1999, months before the first known hepatitis-infected patient came to the clinic for treatment — that his nurses were reusing syringes to draw blood and saline.

Dr Javed said he had served as head of the cancer department at a hospital in Nebraska from 1996 to 1999 and the report suggested that the first case among his patients was detected in November 1999.

Maintaining that hepatitis C virus spread from blood, he said transfusion of hepatitis C virus required 20 to 25 years to cause the fatal disease. “But I stayed there for only three-and-a-half years,” he said, adding, “so I am not responsible for causing hepatitis-C outbreak in the United States.”

Answering a question about the revocation of his licence, Dr Javed said a medical licence was renewed in the US every year. As he had not visited the Nebraska state during the last one year, he said, his licence was yet to be renewed.

“Dr Javed, who became a provincial minister of health in Pakistan in January, could not be reached. Two of his Nebraska attorneys declined to comment on the petition or the allegations in it,” says the report in the World-Herald.

Dr Javed’s lawyer Mark Christensen told the newspaper that it was “inappropriate to comment to the press on this matter.”

“I think that there’s been too much coverage already. It has or will make it impossible for Dr Javed to have a fair trial in Dodge County,” he added.

State officials said they were trying to serve Dr Javed notice and set a hearing date, after which the state’s chief medical officer would decide whether and how to discipline him.