RESEARCHER REPLIES TO HIV STORM

One of the researchers at the centre of the storm over whether medical incompetence in Swaziland led to children becoming infected with HIV has called for an investigation in into how Swazi children became HIV-positive even though their mothers were negative.

It was suggested children may have been infected by dirty needles.

When the news of the research broke the Swazi Government and the Swaziland Nurses Association (SNA).immediately condemned it and dismissed its findings. The nurses even went so far as to call the researchers ‘racist’.

Now, Devon Brewer, one of the researchers, in a letter to the Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati III, has called for an investigation into ‘the possibility of blood-borne HIV transmission in both children and adults in Swaziland’.

He added, ‘To instill both public and scientific confidence, these investigations must be rigorous, comprehensive, transparent, and independent of individuals and organisations that have denied the potential importance of blood-borne HIV transmission in Africa. Investigations should also be designed to identify problems and correct them and not to assign blame or prosecute.

‘It is not sufficient to claim that healthcare is mostly safe. Healthcare providers must demonstrate that healthcare is always safe, patients must insist that it is so and governments must ensure that it is. In the meantime, the public must be educated about the full spectrum of risks of blood-borne HIV transmission and how to avoid them.’

To read the full letter click here.

SWAZILAND NURSES AND HIV HYSTERIA

Don’t shoot the messenger.

The outcry in Swaziland at news that one in five Swazi children with the HIV virus may have been infected by negligent medical staff is now hysterical.

The latest to join the chorus of denial is the Swaziland Nurses Association (SNA).

It has condemned a respected academic journal the International Journal of STD and HIV, published by the British Association of Sexual Health and HIV, and its researchers as ‘racist’ because it reported that the children probably became HIV-positive because Swazi medical staff gave them injections with contaminated needles. The injections were often unnecessary.

The SNA is not alone in denying the research findings. The Swaziland Ministry of Health has rejected the researchers’ findings because they did not have permission from the Swazi Government to conduct the research.

The Secretary General of SNA Sibusiso Lushaba told the Weekend Observer, a newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, ‘Their research findings are utter hogwash and rubbish. The allegations they peddle have never happened and will never happen even beyond their wildest dreams. They are out to slander not only the good name and work of nurses in the country but in the region and eventually the world.’

He added SNA would ‘leave no stone unturned in their bid to unravel the true colours of the organisation, while exposing its racist agenda’.

He said that the Swaziland Ministry of Health’s Scientific and Ethics Committee should be strengthened and a nursing and medical research authority should be established to ‘investigate and regulate anyone wishing to conduct research in the country while ensuring that they do not have ulterior motives. It should also tail them as they conduct their research to ensure that they do everything ethically and produce ethically balanced research findings that will be factual and be of assistance to other research fellows and not sensational as the British organisation’s’.

Lushaba and other critics in Swaziland have a deep ignorance of how scientific academic research is done. The research findings that have caused upset would have been ‘peer reviewed’ by other academics and the methods of research would have been verified and validated by scientific experts.

This research is not like reports published in the Observer and other Swaziland newspapers: full of lies, half truths and hysteria.

GOVERNMENT DENIES HIV SCANDAL

There was an interesting insight into the mentality of the Swaziland Government following the news to that one in five children in the kingdom who are HIV-positive may have caught the virus as a result of medical negligence.

The first stance of anyone in authority in the kingdom was to deny there was a problem.

So nothing new there then.

But then up pops the Principal Secretary Dr Steven Shongwe at the Ministry of Health. We can’t trust the academics who conducted the research (and had it published in the International Journal of STD and HIV, of the British Association of Sexual Health and HIV) because the Swazi Government hadn’t given the researchers permission to carry out the research.

‘There is a Ministry of Health Scientific and Ethics Committee that approves any health related research. With regard to this particular study, the committee is not privy to any application or approval of the study by any organisation or individual. Therefore, the information contained might not necessarily provide the official position of the issues raised,’ he told the Swazi Observer, the newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.

So there you have it. Only information officially sanctioned by the government is allowed in Swaziland.

NEGLIGENT MEDICS GIVE KIDS HIV

One in five Swazi children infected by HIV got it from the negligence of medical staff in Swaziland.

They did not contract the virus from their own HIV-positive mothers. In many cases the mothers of HIV-positive children in Swaziland are themselves HIV-negative.

A new academic research study to be published tomorrow (1 December 2009) to coincide with World AIDS Day says the children probably became HIV-positive because Swazi medical staff gave them injections with contaminated needles. The injections were often unnecessary.

The International Journal of STD and HIV, published by the British Association of Sexual Health and HIV, looked at rates of HIV infection among children in Swaziland.

Swaziland has the highest rate of HIV infection in the world with 26 per cent of the adult population infected. Life expectancy in the kingdom is now 32 years.

Using data from the Swaziland Demographic and Health Survey, the authors of the research found that one in five Swazi children aged two to 12 who are infected with the virus have HIV-negative mothers.

These children had experienced many more medical injections and vaccinations than their uninfected brothers or sisters. Most of these related to anti-malaria health programmes.

Africans are subject to a much higher proportion of injections and blood tests than patients in the West, according to a 1999 study for the World Health Organisation.

That research found that a wide range of common symptoms such as colds, ear infections, fatigue and tonsillitis were treated with injections rather than oral medication.

The study concluded that at least 50 per cent of these were unsafe, with needles being used repeatedly on one patient after another, without sterilisation.

Source Daily Telegraph, UK.