Madhya Pradesh: Six children with thalassemia undergoing blood transfusion test HIV positive

Six children suffering from thalassemia and undergoing blood transfusions at the district hospital in Madhya Pradesh’s Satna have tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus, The Hindu quoted officials as saying on Tuesday.

The children are aged between three and 15 years, reported The Times of India. They had tested positive for HIV between January and May, but the matter came to light only recently.

Unidentified officials told The Times of India that contaminated blood transfusions were the source of infection in all cases, except one. The parents of one of the children were also found to be HIV-positive, PTI quoted Satna Collector Satish Kumar S as saying.

On Tuesday, the state government formed a panel to investigate the matter and directed it to submit a report within seven days.

Deputy Chief Minister Rajendra Shukla, who holds the health portfolio, told The Hindu that the government was investigating whether the blood transfusions took place in other hospitals or only in the government hospital.

The panel is headed by Satya Avadhiya, regional director of the Public Health and Medical Education Department’s Rewa division.

It includes Ruby Khan, deputy director of the State Blood Transfusion Council, Romesh Jain, a blood transfusion specialist at AIIMS in Bhopal, Seema Naved of the Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre, Sanjeev Jadon, a senior drug inspector of the Food and Drug Administration in Hoshangabad, and Priyanka Choubey, drug inspector in the same department in Bhopal.

Manoj Shukla, civil surgeon and in-charge chief medical and health officer of the district hospital, said that children suffering from thalassemia are at high risk of contracting HIV as they require blood transfusions regularly, reported The Hindu.

He added that the children were tested and their treatment was started immediately. The medical officer also claimed that the children are “fine now”.

He also said that the infection could have been caused not only through blood transfusions but also through intravenous injections or the use of contaminated syringes. He added that the district hospital’s blood bank follows “all protocols”, with blood issued for transfusion only after donors test negative for all ailments.

“But a chance remains that if a person is in the window period of very early stage of infection, then it is not detected in the tests,” The Hindu quoted Manoj Shukla as saying. “It only comes to fore after a few months.”

The incident in Satna was reported almost two months after five children suffering from thalassemia tested positive for HIV in Jharkhand’s Chaibasa.

The infections were detected during an investigation by a five-member medical team from Ranchi, which was sent after the family of a seven-year-old thalassemia patient alleged that the Sadar Hospital blood bank in Chaibasa had supplied HIV-infected blood for a transfusion.

Blood transfusion guidelines

Blood banks are supposed to follow guidelines issued by the National AIDS Control Organisation, which state that each unit of blood donated from a person must undergo a screening test to detect HIV and hepatitis. Elisa is the most commonly used test for this purpose.

However, if donors have been freshly infected with either HIV or hepatitis, their bodies may not have generated enough antibodies against the virus for them to be detected in screening tests.

The Elisa test can only detect antibodies against these viruses 45 days after the patient is infected. A more sensitive method – the nucleic acid amplification test – reduces the window period to 10-15 days. However, this too cannot totally eliminate the chances of missing out on identifying an infection.

Experts say most cases of blood transfusion-related infections are caused when such tests miss detecting infections, or tests are not carried altogether.