Children's Dental Group in Anaheim sued; lawsuit alleges use of dirty water

CLAREMONT, Calif. (KABC) -- A lawsuit filed against an Anaheim dental clinic alleged that several children came down with bacterial infections from the use of dirty water.

Ramon Amador said his 4-year-old daughter Nairi has mycobacterium abscessus and that it's infected her teeth, gums, bones and tissue.

Because of the infections, he said she needed bacterial injections four times a day and doesn't live like most young children.

"She has a lot of pain, on the neck, on the cheeks, on everything," Amador said. "She wants to go to school, she can't, she can't play with her brothers, she can't do nothing, she needs to stay in the bed."

Amador said Nairi got the infections after she was treated at Children's Dental Group in Anaheim. He and his lawyer alleged the clinic used dirty water.

"These kinds of clinics are set up in these low income, mostly Hispanic neighborhoods to milk the insurance benefits of the children," attorney Catherine Lombardo said.

Lombardo said she was representing about a half-dozen children, including 6-year-old Leo Sanchez.

"They strap the children down on papoose boards, they extract teeth that do not need to be extracted. This is a high volume, high profit clinic that cares about one thing: money," Lombardo said.

ABC7 reached out to the Children's Dental Group regarding the lawsuit and have not heard back.

In a statement to ABC7 back in September, the Children's Dental Group said, "We follow industry standard sterilization and preventative practices, and use state-of-the-art equipment to protect the health and safety of our patients, upon seeing this we began a review and testing of our systems, equipment, water and other elements in the office."