JOHANNESBURG, 6 April 2005 — Bloodstained 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 yesterday.
Researchers found about 24 percent of dental and medical instruments in use in certain pediatric and maternity care centers 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 pediatric 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 centers 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.
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 labeled 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.