Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1996. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1996. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Reuters NewMedia, Inc. 26 August 1996
"Romania has 54 percent of Europe's juvenile AIDS cases, but the Health Ministry and government are totally indifferent and ignore these poor souls, who are running out of time," said Manuela Canepescu of International Children's Services.
Thousands of Romanian children were infected with the HIV-virus that leads to AIDS by contaminated blood and poor hospital hygiene during the last years of communism.
"Romanian society bears responsibility for infecting 98 percent of more than 3,500 children with HIV through injections and transfusions between 1986 and 1989," said Canepescu, a Romanian official working for a British charity.
"All that was done so far from the social point of view was done by foreign charities, with funds from abroad. It is time for Romanians to deal with the problem," Canepescu told a news conference. Some 1,250 children have died of AIDS already.
Revolution and the execution of Stalinist dictator Nicolae Ceausecu in 1989 ended the taboo on discussing AIDS and lifted the lid on the horrendous state of Romanian health care.
Harrowing television images of abandoned children slowly dying from AIDS in Romanian orphanages stunned the world and foreign medical charities rushed to provide care.
Money poured in as charities like the Romanian Angel Appeal set up in 1990 by the wives of the Beatles and Elton John helped renovate squalid buildings housing AIDS children in Bucharest and the Black Sea port city of Constanta.
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