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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 February - 3 March 1999 Issue No. 418 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 February - 3 March 1999 Issue No. 418
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Bad blood
By Nadia Abu El-MagdThe drama unfolded when a 70-year-old patient was proven to have contracted HIV. Her family, who until now has kept the distressing news from her, alerted the prosecutor-general who ordered an immediate investigation.
The woman has been suffering from renal failure since 1994. She undergoes dialysis twice or three times a week and needs 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. I'm torn thousands of times every day when I prevent my children from touching her, and I'm really shaken when she looks at me in her special way," he lamented, almost sure that she knows something is wrong.
Following the patient's diagnosis at the Tawfikiya Hospital in Nasr City, the Ministry of Health acted swiftly, closing the hospital's blood bank and sending the case to the prosecutor-general, whose investigation is continuing.
Dr Abdel-Moneim El-Demerdash, manager of the Nozha Hospital, confirmed the closure of the blood bank but declined further comment. The 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, should he need a blood transfusion from a private blood bank. These banks have been transformed from medical banks to commercial ones."
Dr Salwa Youssef, professor of hematology and the Health Ministry's consultant on blood services, defended private hospitals and criticised the extensive press coverage. "Blood is indispensable," she told Al-Ahram Weekly. "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, defended the hospital's blood bank. "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," she added.
Arabic-language 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 the last transfusion given to the woman was donated by a homosexual, who made a living by selling his blood regularly for money. 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 LE20 each time. And in the past year, he has donated his blood 144 times, sometimes using a phony name.
Youssef insisted that this is humanly 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, does not deny that private blood banks depend on people who sell their blood for money. But he said that this did not necessarily mean that they have contaminated blood or that the banks are 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 told the Weekly. He added, however, that these people only represent one per cent of blood donors.
El-Ekiabi said that if out of the average 500,000 people who need blood transfusions every year, there are faults in two or three cases, "this means that the practice is good." He added reassuringly that "blood banks, both private and public, are under constant and strict scrutiny from the Health Ministry because blood means life."
