23 kids get HIV, finger at hospital

Salim Sheikh’s four-year-old daughter and Shailesh Balash’s 11-year-old son are among 23 thalassaemic children who have tested positive for HIV at the Junagadh Civil Hospital where they had been taking regular blood transfusions.

Both Sheikh, a labourer, and police constable Balash say their children must have acquired the deadly infection from the hospital, because that is the only place where they received transfusions.

The hospital authorities, however, denied they were to blame and claimed that over half the 103 thalassaemic children the hospital treats have been receiving transfusions at other places too. The suggestion is that all the 23 infected children fall in this group.

Health minister Jaynarayan Vyas, too, gave the hospital a clean chit, claiming that a team of officials he had sent to Junagadh today had told him the infection “cannot have happened at the hospital”. Vyas did not explain the basis for this conclusion.

Sheikh, Balash and some other parents allege that the hospital’s blood bank may not have been carrying out proper tests on its collection.

Hospital superintendent G.T. Dayalu refused comment, asking the media to wait till the officials from Gandhinagar handed its report to Vyas.