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"61 children infected with HIV, 5 die
after slip-up"
The
Star (www.thestar.com.my)
(28/09/06)
ALMATY: Sixty-one children are now known to have been infected with the AIDS
virus in southern Kazakhstan as a result of medical negligence, the health
ministry said on Tuesday. Five of them have died.
“As of today we have detected 61 children infected with the HIV virus in
southern Kazakhstan, of whom five have died,” ministry spokesman Moris
Abdulin said.
The Kazakh public prosecutor said it was suing the former regional health
director and his two deputies for gross negligence.
The widening scandal has already led to the sacking of Health Minister
Erbolat Dosayev and the governor of southern Kazakhstan, Bolat Jylkyshyev.
Earlier on Tuesday the ministry had reported 58 infections and four deaths,
all in children who had been admitted to hospital in the region.
The health authorities said it appeared the children had become infected
during blood transfusions or because they had been injected with
unsterilised needles.
The AIDS prevention centre in southern Kazakhstan has said it was conducting
HIV screening on around 12,500 children who were hospitalised in the region
between January and March.
Of these, 2,700 are feared to have come into direct contact with the virus.
There are fears that more cases will come to light.
The United Nations Children's Fund, Unicef, said on Tuesday that it was
dispatching experts specialising in AIDS in children to the region.
The first cases of children to test positive for HIV appeared in May and an
investigation was launched two months later.
As of June 1, there were 6,485 HIV-positive people in Kazakhstan, 58 of them
children under 14, according to official figures. — AFP
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