Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - December 15, 2005
The probe began after preliminary tests showed a boy in Voronezh, 300 miles south of Moscow, was HIV-positive, ITAR-Tass quoted Galina Gorshkova, spokeswoman for regional prosecutors in Voronezh, as saying.
Mikhail Ivanov, a senior regional health official, said the boy may have contracted the virus after receiving medication made from the blood of a longtime blood donor in Voronezh, who was later diagnosed with HIV, the RIA-Novosti news agency reported.
A woman who underwent a transfusion with that donor's blood following childbirth has already been found infected. Some 208 other patients, including the boy, are at risk of having contracted the virus after they were given a medication containing the donor's plasma. Ivanov said 157 of those patients have already tested negative and the rest will be tested within the next three days. A repeat test will be conducted in three months, he said.
Meanwhile, Voronezh governor Vladimir Kulakov blamed the incident on poor medical equipment at local blood transfusion centers, which doesn't allow to test for the virus with 100 percent certitude, RIA-Novosti reported.
The HIV infection has been traced to a 35-year-old female who had been donating blood for several years.
Prosecutors have already opened a criminal case in connection with the contamination under a law that covers infecting people with HIV through unprofessional activity. The law calls for up to five years in prison and removal of the guilty from his or her job for up to three years.
Official statistics show that 330,000 Russians have HIV, but UN experts say the true number is more than 1 million and that the country's epidemic is the biggest in Europe and one of the fastest spreading in the world.
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