The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : HIV-infected child dies

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Mar 26, 2006

Kerala

Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

HIV-infected child dies

Staff Reporter

She contracted the virus through a hospital-acquired infection

Thiruvananthapuram: Reshmi, the two-year-old child from Pachalloor, who was found to have contracted the HIV virus through a hospital-acquired infection about a year ago, died here on Saturday.

According to the authorities at SAT Hospital, where the child was being treated, her family members brought her dead to the hospital in the afternoon.

The child had been suffering from diarrhoeal infection for the past two days and her condition suddenly worsened on Saturday, the family members said.

The body has been kept in the mortuary.

The hospital authorities said the family was yet to take a decision on conducting a post-mortem examination.

SAT Hospital Superintendent K. Rajmohan said that though the child was being treated in the past few months for various opportunistic infections that were a result of the HIV infection, she had not been in a serious state.

Reshmi's was the first case of hospital-acquired infection to have been reported in the State in the past several years, after the structured blood safety and HIV prevention programme of the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) began to be implemented in Kerala.

The controversy arose because the child's parents and older sibling were found to be HIV negative.

It was alleged that the child had acquired the virus through a blood transfusion that was given to her at SAT Hospital in June 2004, when she had been admitted as a newborn in the outborn nursery.

The issue had raked up much controversy after the Medical College Blood Bank and the SAT Hospital, where she was treated, were accused of medical negligence.

An expert committee constituted by the Director of Medical Education, which enquired into the incident, had found that all the tests and procedures insisted on by NACO for ensuring blood safety were being performed routinely by the MCH blood bank.

It was suggested that the unit of blood given to the child could have been collected from a donor who might have been in the window period.

The case had led the Government to announce that extra-sensitive tests like P24 antigen tests would be introduced in all Government blood banks for routine screening of blood.

It was only last month that the child's mother was given a job in the Government service on compassionate grounds.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail