27 Soviet Infants Get AIDS; Syringes Suspected

In an extraordinary development that could more than double the number of Soviets acknowledged to have contracted the AIDS virus, nurses using contaminated syringes apparently have infected 27 infants at a children’s hospital, Soviet news media reported Friday.

The story in the trade union newspaper Trud was confirmed by Valentin I. Pokrovsky, president of the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences. He said in a television interview Friday night that tests at the clinic are continuing. He said he expects the number of persons contaminated may be double or even triple the number found so far.

While Trud reported that at least one child is known to have died from the disease, Pokrovsky told Soviet Television that there had been no deaths.

As recently as last July, Pokrovsky was quoted in a magazine interview as saying that only 64 Soviet citizens were known to have tested positive for the acquired immune deficiency syndrome virus.

With 31 more now recorded from the childrens’ hospital and the possibility that that number might triple, the total number of cases could increase to well over 150.

Blood Donor Sought

It was not clear from the Soviet media reports how the syringes came to be contaminated, but there were suggestions that the virus could be traced to a blood donor who is being sought.

The incidents occurred in the southern city of Elista, in the Kalmyk Autonomous Republic between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. All the infants infected were under 2 years old, according to state television.

“I believe we can simply say that the fault is with the hospital staff and nurses who probably used unsterile syringes for children’s injections, or just kept changing the needle, which amounts to the same thing,” Pokrovsky told Trud.

The newspaper added that a spot check in the area found that one out of seven medical instruments was not sterile.

There is an acknowledged shortage of disposable syringes in Soviet hospitals, but they are in common use among veterinarians, Trud said. “The contrast between these two facts is no less than an insult for morals, common sense and patriotism,” Trud charged.

Trud said that a recent nationwide examination of doctors’ qualifications showed that at least 30% are not fit to practice. But they continue in practice, it said, because of a national shortage of doctors.

“Undoubtedly, defending ourselves against idiots in medicine means above all quickly getting rid of the idiots themselves,” Trud said. “Better to have no doctors at all than bad ones.”