This posting contains the executive summary of a new white paper from Physicians for Human Rights, on the transmission of HIV in Africa through unsafe medical care, including unsafe injections and blood transfusions. The paper concludes that AIDS prevention efforts need to take into account significant evidence that transmission through unsafe medical care has been significantly underestimated, and urgently recommends increased investment in adequately protecting blood supplies, preventing re-use of needles for injections, and taking other health care precautions that are considered standard in developed countries.
While acknowledging that there is much legitimate debate over precisely how much transmission occurs through these means, the paper notes that even according to minimum estimates from the World Health Organization, the HIV virus is transmitted to as many as half a million people a year in developing countries through these mechanisms rather than through sex. While critics say that focus on these figures could divert attention from necessary prevention measures aimed at safe sex, the PHR paper argues for increased resources for safe medical care without reducing resources for the safe-sex message.
The paper notes the double standard implicit in the denial of basic principles of safe health care for developing countries. Among the examples it cites is a recent finding in Bas Congo Province in the DRC that only 42% of the blood that was transfused in the province was screened for HIV. The study cited estimated that in this one province of about 3.3 million people, blood transfusions alone led to approximately 888 HIV infections in the first nine months of 2001. In the first decade of the HIV pandemic, developed countries stepped up medical care precautions, including blood screening, reducing transmission through these means. Such measures, however, have never been implemented systematically in many African and Asian countries, while the medical establishment has downplayed the problem.