10 More Children Get AIDS Virus : Apparently Infected by Tainted Syringes in Soviet Hospital

Ten more Soviet children have been infected with the AIDS virus, apparently by doctors and nurses in Volgograd using syringes that had not been sterilized after injections given other infected children, the government newspaper Izvestia said Friday.

The case was the second of its kind, according to Soviet officials, and AIDS now appears to be spreading as fast through the country’s health care system as through sexual contacts.

The Volgograd children, who have been identified only in the past week as carriers of the human immunodeficiency virus, had been patients in the pulmonary ward of a city clinic early this year or late last year when other children were sent there for treatment of what only later were discovered to be AIDS-related diseases.

Those children, from the city of Elista near the Caspian Sea, had themselves been infected with the virus through contaminated syringes. Altogether, 46 children and 10 adults were infected at the Elista hospital, government officials said in their most recent report on the situation there. One child has died.

20-Century Plague

In a report headlined, “Cause of Infection, A Dirty Syringe,” Izvestia said:

“This plague of the 20th Century has found a unique way into our country--the sloppiness and backwardness of our health care and the slovenly ways of our medical personnel. Patients get injections with whatever is handy, and the result is AIDS.”

The growing popular and political demands for extra caution had no impact on the staff of Volgograd Clinic No. 7, Izvestia said, implying that this could be the rule rather than the exception.

That children were being infected with the virus was doubly tragic, Izvestia said, for they had no way of knowing or checking what kind of medical equipment was being used and what kind of care they were receiving.

The Volgograd case is particularly worrying, Izvestia commented, because many Elista children were sent for medical treatment to other cities, including such regional centers as Moscow, Rostov and Astrakhan, before medical authorities recognized that they were suffering from acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS.

Vadim Pokrovsky, head of a special AIDS laboratory at the Soviet Union’s Central Epidemiological Research Institute, told Izvestia that the AIDS outbreak in Elista had probably started last May, not in January when it was identified, and there was fear that the disease may have spread much farther--largerly through the health care system--than had been realized.

Patients Routinely Transferred

Under the Soviet Union’s state-run medical system, patients are routinely transferred from clinic to hospital to district hospital to regional and even national medical centers for specialized treatment or to ease overcrowding of local facilities.

Although it is impossible to be certain that the Elista patients brought AIDS to Volgograd, Izvestia said, there was no doubt that the spread of the virus was “due to the notorious lack of disposable syringes and a worthless system of sterilization,” both of which have been a national scandal.

Hundreds of children were checked in Moscow when the AIDS connection was discovered with the Elista patients, Izvestia said, adding that “there is no guarantee that medical personnel in Volgograd were so meticulous.”

Their condition had been discovered, health officials said, in the course of regular examinations of “those with grave diseases characteristic of those with immunodeficiency.”

Hundreds of children are now belatedly being tested in Volgograd, though it is proving difficult to trace them five to nine months after their hospitalization and possible infection, and “urgent measures are being taken to prevent the further proliferation” of the virus.

Disposable syringes, which are in extremely short supply here, are being rushed to the area along with “other medical equipment,” presumably sterilizers.

A criminal investigation, presumably into possible negligence by clinic personnel, has been opened by the state prosecutor’s office in Volgograd.

Before the latest cases, Soviet health authorities had identified 192 Soviet citizens and 378 foreigners as carriers of the AIDS virus. So far, six people--three Soviet citizens and three foreigners--have died of AIDS-related diseases, according to official figures.

The 10 Volgograd children were all reported in “satisfactory condition” and at home under medical supervision. None has died so far, health authorities said.

As AIDS has spread over the past year, Soviet commentators have raged against the Health Ministry and the medical authorities, demanding that they enforce basic discipline in hospitals and clinics.

Special Laws Demanded

“Whose butt will it be tomorrow that a moronic and yawning nurse drives her dirty needle into?” Oleg Moroz, the medical writer of the respected weekly newspaper Literary Gazette, wrote angrily last month.

Moroz and others have called for a special law on AIDS, laying down the rights and responsibilities of AIDS sufferers.

“The tragedy in Elista showed that it’s roulette,” he said. “No one can confidently rely on his prudent behavior as a safeguard.”

Without such a law, he said, in an argument echoed by Izvestia on Friday, those infected with AIDS through no fault of their own could become social outcasts, and some might in turn refuse to take the necessary precautions to prevent the spread of the disease.

AIDS sufferers have been “subjected to persecution by enraged mobs,” Izvestia recalled. There have also been “officially organized ousters of the family members from their jobs” for fear that the virus would spread.