Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2003. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - June 1, 2003
Rowan Philp
Three tiny notice-board pins have seen more than two dozen anguished parents faced with taking their children for HIV blood tests.
Last week, a 13-year-old girl at Nico Malan High School, in Humansdorp, west of Port Elizabeth, mentioned to her mother that a classmate had pierced her and "lots" of her friends with a pin as part of a game that afternoon.
Within hours, the school had taken statements from sometimes tearful Grade 8 and 9 pupils. They revealed that 29 children had been "pinned" by three mischief-makers - shortly after being warned about blood and sharp objects in a lecture on HIV/Aids.
Headmaster Pieter Potgieter decided to activate an emergency plan.
The school immediately informed all 29 parents or guardians that there was "an extremely remote possibility" that the pinning game could have spread HIV if one of the pricked pupils was already HIV-positive. If so, there would be a race against time to administer antiretroviral drugs that could prevent the virus from taking hold in their children's bloodstreams.
Potgieter had already asked for 29 saliva-based HIV "quick-test kits" and for a clinical nurse to be brought to the school.
This week Potgieter said the plan required all 29 parents to give their immediate consent to on-the-spot HIV testing on their children in the school hall. "Incredibly, every one of them did."
However, the emergency testing was abandoned when only 10 HIV test kits could be assembled on the day.
"The pinning was just a sick joke, but given the realities of this disease we have in our country, we felt we had to try to do whatever we could in the time we had," said Potgieter. "Unfortunately, it turned out there weren't enough kits to go around, so we left it to the parents and advised them to do the tests through their private doctors. Some have already done it, and I'm confident that - given the kind of parents we have here - they would immediately inform us in the very unfortunate event that their child tested positive."
However, parent Shirley Wait said many parents at Nico Malan were "furious" and felt the pin- prickers should be expelled.
"I've told my 10-year-old and seven-year-old that they must run straight to the school office and report it any time they see another child walking around with a pin or something like that," said Wait.
Kathy van Eeden, whose daughter Kathleen was "pinned", said gossip had already created "unnecessary fear" among some parents.
"One story is that one of the girls is naughty and sleeps around, so she might have spread Aids to the others, but that's really just nonsense," said Van Eeden. "Another one is that the kids injected each other with syringes, when they were just pins. The stories have all been distorted. I'm glad the school took it so seriously and spoke openly to us like they did."
A 14-year-old Nico Malan schoolgirl said the pinning game had been going on for weeks, and that she had been jabbed "about 30 times". She said the game peaked after the Aids talk.
Professor Danie Breytenbach, spokesman for the Eastern Cape Department of Education, said: "Some people have said the school overreacted, but I think the principal should be praised. He could have swept this under the carpet, but instead he did everything in a completely transparent way.
"Hopefully, this will also help send a message that children must be careful not to play with sharp objects out there."
Potgieter said it "did worry us" that the pinning spree had followed an Aids-awareness lecture, but added: "Even if the talk did trigger it, we don't believe for a second that any of the three learners meant to harm others."
He said the three offending girls had been assigned additional projects on HIV/Aids and "some kind of health community service".
Dr Glenda Gray, director of the prenatal HIV research unit at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, said there was a theoretical chance of transferring HIV with an infected solid pin, but that the risk was "minuscule".
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