Pregnant woman in Bihar given HIV+ve blood; sacked technician blames test kit - Hindustan Times
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Pregnant woman in Bihar given HIV+ve blood; sacked technician blames test kit

Nov 29, 2021 10:50 PM IST

Santosh Kumar, who has been with the blood bank since 2013, said he was sacked without an inquiry because he was on a one-year contract that was due to be renewed in March 2022.

PATNA: The Bihar government on Sunday sacked a laboratory technician, who allegedly collected HIV-infected blood from a donor that was later transfused to a pregnant woman at the district hospital in Nalanda, 60km south-east of Patna, officials said.

The Bihar woman who was administered the infected blood and her child born on 5 November haven’t tested positive yet. Officials said they will conduct weekly tests on her and her newborn for HIV. (REUTERS)
The Bihar woman who was administered the infected blood and her child born on 5 November haven’t tested positive yet. Officials said they will conduct weekly tests on her and her newborn for HIV. (REUTERS)

Senior health department officials were alerted to the possibility that the blood bank processed infected blood after a report in a local newspaper. When district health officials traced the donor, it confirmed that the donor and his wife - she was also pregnant and was to be given blood - were people living with HIV but had concealed this information when he donated blood.

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Santosh Kumar, the technician who processed the donor’s blood at the district hospital in Biharsharif, said he followed the procedure and tested the sample for the five mandatory screening tests for Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, HIV, syphilis and malaria.

“The authorities should conduct a re-test of the blood sample of the donor on the rapid screening kit and see the result for themselves,” said Kumar, insisting that the rapid screening test was to be blamed, not him.

Kumar, who has been with the blood bank since 2013, said he was sacked without an inquiry because he was on a one-year contract that was due to be renewed in March 2022.

The woman who was administered the infected blood and her child born on 5 November haven’t tested positive yet. Officials said they will conduct weekly tests on her and her newborn for HIV.

Nalanda district civil surgeon Dr Sunil Kumar said he has ordered an inquiry headed by a panel of three doctors led by Nalanda Sadar hospital deputy superintendent.

Dr Kumar said he has reason to believe that Santosh Kumar possibly skipped the HIV test and went by the donor’s self-declaration who claimed he was in good health.

Health department officials said some staffers at the district’s anti-retroviral therapy centre possibly figured that the man has donated blood when he turned up at their centre for his dose of medicines soon after the blood donation. They did not, however, inform their supervisors.

A Bihar State AIDS Control Society official who spoke on condition of anonymity said a confirmatory ELISA test should have been conducted as well. “We have an ELISA reader machine for the confirmatory test of blood samples,” the official said.

Rajesh Kumar, treasurer of the Indian Red Cross Society-managed government blood bank at Biharsharif, confirmed that there was an ELISA machine but asserted that it wasn’t working in absence of testing kits. “I have written on two-three occasions to the civil surgeon for procurement and making the machine functional,” Kumar said.

“It is only in advance case of HIV/AIDS that the viral load is not detected in screening, but normally such patients are so weak and thin that one can easily make out by their appearance that they are HIV/AIDS infected,” said Dr Upendra Kumar Sinha, retired chief medical officer of the blood bank at the Patna Medical College Hospital (PMCH), now the chief medical officer of the blood bank at the Mahavir Vatsalya Aspataal.

On the time taken to confirm the status of the woman who was given the infected blood, Dr Sinha, blamed the government for purchasing outdated rapid screening kits.

“At PMCH, we used to test blood samples on fourth-generation P24 antigen testing kits, which has a 14-day window period. However, the government has provided third-generation testing kits at Biharsharif. Such testing kits have a window period of 30-45 days from the date of being infected. These days we have modern Chemiluminescent Assay kits, with a window period of less than 5-6 days. The government should invest in them,” he said.

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  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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    Ruchir writes on health, aviation, power and myriad other issues. An ex-TOI, he has worked both on Desk and in reporting. He over 25 years of broadcast and print journalism experience in Assam, Jharkhand & Bihar.

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