A case of sheer carelessness by hospital authorities came up in Junagarh district of Gujarat, where as many as 23 children contracted the AIDS virus after the blood transfusion. All the children are between the age group of 5 to 10. The children belong to various districts and were suffering from thalassemia and used to visit the government hospital for free blood transfusion. However the medical staff denied the allegation of the parents and said that the children might have contracted the virus somewhere else.
The owner of a private blood bank in Vadodara, Dr Vijay Shah, said the enquiry will reveal the actual reason but there are possibilities of infected blood being transmitted as there were no legalized blood banks in Junagadh a few years ago.
Dr GT Dayalu, Medical Superintendent, said, “We have been strictly following the guidelines of the NACO. There are 23 cases of children who are HIV positive.”
The National Human Rights Commission has sent a notice to the Gujarat government demanding answer for the sheer negligence of the hospital authorities.
Health Minister Jaynarayan Vyas even claimed that the children may have contracted the virus at some other place. “When they arrived at the hospital, pre-transfusion blood test was carried out and the report showed that they were positive. So they may have got affected somewhere else since there are multiple sources of transfusion,” said Vyas.