HEALTH-EGYPT: Contaminated Blood Scare

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Yasser Talaat

CAIRO, Mar 7 1999 (IPS) - It happened in Cairo this month – the worst nightmare of a hospital patient. A 70-year-old woman, given a blood transfusion, contracted the HIV virus that leads to AIDS because blood was contaminated.

In the outcry that followed, Egypt’s prosecutor-general who ordered an immediate investigation.

The woman Fatima Amin has been suffering from renal failure since 1994. She had undergone dialysis twice or three times a week and needed a blood transfusion every three months.

Following a routine test for viral infections, which all renal- failure patients have to undergo, the patient’s family was informed that she had become infected with the HIV virus. The family immediately blamed the hospital from which she had received her last blood transfusion.

Wagih Amin, the patient’s son, was quoted by an Arabic language newspaper as saying that he himself had paid for the transfusion from the Nozha International Hospital in Heliopolis.

“We live a real tragedy,” he said. “My mother still doesn’t know that she is infected with this fatal disease…”

Following the patient’s diagnosis at the Tawfikiya Hospital in Nasr City, the Egyptian Ministry of Health acted swiftly, closing the hospital’s blood bank and sending the case to the prosecutor- general, whose investigation is continuing.

Blood banks at two other hospitals were also closed.

The opposition Al-Wafd newspaper wrote: “Watch out for AIDS’ should be a piece of advice for every citizen who is concerned about his health and life- particularly when they need a blood transfusion from a private blood bank.”

Dr Salwa Youssef, professor of hematology and the Egyptian Health Ministry’s consultant on blood services, defended private hospitals and criticised the extensive press coverage.

“Blood is indispensable,” she said. “So, it is not in anybody’s interest to level accusations indiscriminately at all private hospitals. What would people do if they lose confidence in blood banks?”

Youssef, who also works as a blood consultant at the Nozha Hospital, said “It’s an excellent blood bank. It was doing a superb job and I have not noticed any negligence at any time there.”

She went on to explain that the infected woman belongs, like all renal-failure patients, to what is known as a “high risk group”, due to her needing constant blood transfusions. Youssef said that there was no proof that the woman had contracted the HIV virus from her last blood transfusion.

“She could have got it from a contaminated dialysis machine or from a previous transfusion,” Youssef added.

Newspapers accused many of the private blood banks of depending on people who sell their blood for money – “blood merchants, homosexuals and drug addicts”.

The newspapers said that a homosexual, who made a living by selling his blood regularly for money, donated the last transfusion given to the woman.

The newspapers quoted the man, who until his arrest did not know that he had AIDS, as saying that he used to sell his blood sometimes twice on the same day, for about 6 dollars each time. And in the past year, he has donated his blood 144 times, sometimes using a phony name.

Youssef, however, declared this was impossible. “This is incompatible with life. If this were true, he should have died within the first two months,” she said.

Dr Magdi El-Ekiabi, manager of the blood bank at Al-Demerdash Hospital, admitted that private blood banks depended on people who sell their blood for money. But he said that this did not necessarily mean that they had contaminated blood or that the banks were not examining their blood.

“Blood banks do rely on chronic donors, but this doesn’t mean that they are drug addicts or homosexuals; they are poor people who need money,” El-Ekiabi said. He added, however, that these people only represent one percent of blood donors.

El-Ekiabi said that if out of the average 500,000 Egyptians who need blood transfusions every year, there are faults in two or three cases, “this means that the practice is good.”

He maintained that “blood banks, both private and public, are under constant and strict scrutiny from the Egyptian Health Ministry because blood means life”.