25 March 2010
Ajay Parmar
Jaipur, India
The committee constituted by the state government to investigate the case of five thalessemia children being infected with HIV during blood transfusion at Umaid Hospital in Jodhpur turned out to be false and fabricated. It was alleged that the patients, undergoing treatment at the hospital, were infected by blood transfusion. Interestingly, the blood is supposed to be ‘tested’ from the hospital blood bank.
The investigation team has discovered that the hospital has been performing the blood transfusion in accordance with the guidelines of National Aids Control Organisation (NACO).
On the basis of the panel report, health minister A A Khan said, while replying to the question of Soorsagar MLA Surya Kanta Vyas on Tuesday, that the hospital had followed all the guidelines laid down by the NACO. Naturally, there is no possibility of the blood getting infected with HIV virus.
He added that no anomaly was observed by the committee in the process of blood transfusion and said that there was some other reason for the children getting infected with the virus. But he did not clarify the complexities in the process termed as the window period, which is a time that the virus takes to get activated in the donated blood.
According to doctors, the blood is properly tested during donation but even if it is infected with the virus, it takes at least one or two months to be confirmed. And if the blood is given to any patient before that period, it is considered disinfected but if it has any virus, it may develop signs of its existence after the window period is over but by then it is too late.
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