S. Africa’s children risk catching HIV in hospital

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Blood-stained medical instruments and mix-ups with HIV-contaminated breast milk are raising the risk that children in some South African hospitals will contract the AIDS virus, a survey said on Tuesday.

Researchers found about 24 percent of dental and medical instruments in use in certain paediatric and maternity care centres in Free State province were contaminated with “invisible blood”, and 17.5 percent with “visible blood”.

“Health care-acquired infections are completely avoidable,” said John Samuel, chief executive of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, which funded the research. 

"The evidence generated from this study suggests there is a need to cut the potential for HIV transmission in dental, maternity and paediatric facilities.”

South Africa has the world’s highest caseload of HIV patients, and 29 percent of the 4,000 mothers surveyed in 82 public hospitals and health centres in the Free State were found to be HIV positive. No private hospitals were surveyed.

Activists say more than 600 people die a day in South Africa, prompting massive awareness campaigns, but Professor Shaheen Mehtar of the University of Stellenbosch said infection control measures had collapsed at the hospitals surveyed.

MIXING BOTTLES

Over 92 percent of HIV-positive mothers breastfed their children, 60 percent for more than one year. This put their offspring at risk of the disease even if they had been born HIV-negative, as breastfeeding can transmit the virus.

Breast milk taken from women and stored to be given to their children later could also be mixed up, researchers found, giving HIV-negative children HIV-positive milk.

“A major problem was that bottles were labelled by cot numbers rather than by the name of the baby and rarely checked, allowing milk to be fed to the baby if the cot was moved,” said Mehtar in a statement issued as the research was presented at a conference in Cape Town.

Free State health spokeswoman Elke de Witt described the report as “valuable”, local news agency SAPA said. She said the province now labelled bottles more clearly in hospitals and was looking at how to approach the issue of HIV-positive breastfeeding as poor women found formula milk expensive.

The report recommended a campaign to inform staff and patients of the risks of bad practice. “Well-informed patients are best placed to monitor weaknesses in infection control,” the Mandela Foundation’s Samuel said. 

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