More Info from Kazakhstan, continued from the previous post...

AIDS and kids. This tragic combination becomes more prevalent each year. We hear a lot about AIDS orphans and infected children in Africa ... especially these day, but I am NOT using the 'M' word again for a while ... but information from another part of the world is beginning to come in.

This article out of Kazakhstan titled, "Bad times are over, worse to come",explains a bit about what's happening right now, and allows us to revisit a scenario that's played out far too many times ...

First it seemed that nothing could be worse than the initial shock caused by the first ten HIV cases among children. Alas, life has proven that it was only a top of an iceberg and the horror is only beginning.

... But these statistics threaten to get significantly older in the nearest future. Doctors categorically refuse to make any forecasts about the possible number of the HIV cases among children. The HIV tests are becoming the main concern of Shymkent city and regional clinics and hospitals.

A horrible realization that over 20 thousand children under the age of five had received medical treatment alongside HIV+ kids, before any precautions against cross-contamination of blood, instruments, etc, went into place, is causing panic.

n early August it was decided to carry out HIV tests among all 20 thousand children. Parents and relatives of the first part of the list received notifications about a necessity for their children to pass tests. A part of them agreed and came to medical institutions together with their children. Mass tests began.

... The first desperate hope of the doctors that no HIV cases would be revealed anymore collapsed causing a public outcry. Results of the tests continued to reveal more and more HIV cases among children.

... The location of several blood donors, whose blood was transfused to the children was established. At the same time the investigation has established that two of the infected children have never had any blood transfusions, which contradicted the main version about the donor way of infection…

Also at issue is the fact that parents are refusing to have children tested because they, themselves, do not want to be diagnosed.

Some of the parents (the precise number is unknown, but it is growing each day) are already categorically refusing to pass tests and to have any contacts with the local medicine at all.

There was one attempt at suicide on the part of a mother who learned about the HIV-infection of her child. A question arises - what is to be done with the parents that refuse to bring their children for the tests and what is to be done with the mothers that get this terrible sentence-diagnosis?

Heads are rolling, apparently, as the Governor of the South Kazakhstan Region, and Yerbolat Dossayev, Minister of Health have gotten the axe.

"At a meeting [of the Security Council] the situation around 55 HIV cases among children in South Kazakhstan was regarded. The regional Governor Zhylkishiyev and the Health Minister Dossayev were dismissed for serious shortcomings in their work," - Nurlan Abdirov, Deputy Secretary of the Security Council said on September 20.

Negotiations have taken place to send the infected kids to Slovakia, and to received medical aid from that country.

The meeting between the Minister and the Ambassador took place in Astana ... October 4. At the talks the sides discussed medical assistance to the HIV-infected patients in South Kazakhstan. Earlier the Slovakian Republic expressed a readiness to send a medial delegation to South Kazakhstan for testing and treatment. The Slovakian specialists are expected to arrive in Kazakhstan November 21.

It all just breaks my heart and wonders why and how this is still happening. How long has it been that the medical world has known how HIV is transmitted?

Yes, many of the kids in Kaz with HIV/AIDS got it from their mothers, I'm sure, and that is very sad, but the thought of those who contracted the disease while being treated for something else in government hospitals just makes me want to cry, and run through the house tearing my hair out with anger and frustration. Where else is this happening RIGHT NOW?