Faulty test kits spreading HIV in India

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Faulty test kits spreading HIV in India

 

Reuters

 

Kolkata, November 2: Faulty blood-testing kits for HIV and hepatitis

may have been fraudulently sold to government clinics across India,

possibly resulting in people receiving transfusions of infected blood,

officials said on Thursday.

 

The government is seizing kits across the country and has ordered a

probe into the possible fraud after two brothers appeared in a Kolkata

court on Monday accused of selling hundreds of thousands of

blood-testing kits long past their expiry date.

 

Govind and Ghansyam Sharma, whose company Monozyme India has several

contracts to supply the kits to the government, deny charges of

malpractice and forgery.

 

Both are still in police custody after being denied bail.

 

" The Kolkata police findings have a strong nationwide connection and

we have ordered seizures of kits from every other state, " said P K

Hota, who retired on Wednesday as Union Health Secretary.

 

" We will ... find out how many people have been infected by HIV or

hepatitis and rectify the mistakes, " he added.

 

The news follows a report published by Britain's Royal Society of

Medicine, which said that India dangerously underestimated the number

of its estimated 5.7 million HIV-infected people who caught the virus

through reused needles in hospitals and similar hygiene lapses.

 

The US researchers, writing in the society's International Journal of

STD (sexually transmitted disease) and AIDS, said India is placing too

much emphasis on preventing the sexual transmission of the virus.

 

India says more than 80 per cent of HIV-infected people caught the

virus while having sex, much of the time with prostitutes. The report

says these figures are inflated and are blinding India to preventing

other routes of transmission.

 

Whistleblower

 

A tip-off from an employee at Monozyme resulted in police in West

Bengal finding more than 100,000 obsolete blood-test kits in blood

banks across the state.

 

Monozyme India had supplied the kits, which are used to screen

potential blood donors, to at least nine other states, police in

Kolkata said.

 

Two other medical supply companies are now also under investigation

suspected of similar fraud.

 

There are already reports of people catching HIV after receiving blood

from donors who were wrongly given the all-clear.

 

Sailen Ghosh, secretary of the Thalassaemia (a blood disorder) and

AIDS Prevention Society in Kolkata, told Reuters he knew of at least

six people who caught HIV in the last year after receiving routine

blood transfusions.

 

Police said the number of people infected with HIV and hepatitis after

receiving badly screened blood could run into thousands.

 

 

 

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