Baby AIDS case in Kasakhstan

AIDS (aydz)

Acronym for acquired immune deficiency syndrome, a fatal disease caused by the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV. Believed to have originated in Africa, AIDS has become an epidemic, infecting tens of millions of people worldwide. The virus, which is transmitted from one individual to another through the exchange of body fluids (such as blood or semen), attacks white blood cells, thereby causing the body to lose its capacity to ward off infection. As a result, many AIDS patients die of opportunistic infections that strike their debilitated bodies. AIDS first appeared in the United States in 1981, primarily among homosexuals and intravenous drug users who shared needles, but throughout the world, it is also transmitted by heterosexual contact. Today, scientists are hopeful that AIDS can be managed by new drugs, such as protease inhibitors, and need not be fatal. (See AZT.)

SHYMKENT, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - A Kazakh court jailed 17 health workers on Wednesday for infecting dozens of babies with HIV/AIDS but provoked outrage from parents for sparing four senior officials from incarceration.

The 21 doctors and officials went on trial in the southern city of Shymkent in January on charges of criminal negligence for allowing the children to be infected, mainly through blood transfusions in hospitals.

So far 10 babies have died as a result of the infection.

Judge Ziyadinkhan Pirniyaz gave suspended sentences to senior health official Nursulu Tasmagambetova and three others.

The remaining defendants received jail sentences ranging from a few months to eight years.

Tension in the courtroom exploded when the children's parents shouted "Death penalty to Tasmagambetova!" and tried to break through a police cordon in an attempt to reach the defendants.

As a police van drove the convicts away from the court, the babies' distressed relatives, some in tears, threw stones and plastic bottles at the van and shouted "Death!" and "What for?"

The case marked a new front in the spread of the AIDS virus in the ex-Soviet Central Asian state where the World Bank says the number of registered cases has almost doubled each year since 2000.

Injecting drugs is the most common course of infection in Central Asia, the main route of drugs trafficking from Afghanistan to Europe. Crumbling Soviet-era hospitals and medical infrastructure are also contributing to the problem.