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AIDS expert Kunal Saha is calling on World Bank
officials to release a report on faulty diagnostic
HIV test
kits that could be putting Indians at risk for the virus. Saha, a professor
at Ohio State University, also wants officials to ensure the kits, which he
said produce false negative results, are removed from blood banks and
hospitals in the country.
Earlier this year,
Saha went on a bank-sponsored mission to India to examine a program to
combat the spread of HIV. He and two India-based medical specialists visited
hospitals and blood banks in major cities, gathering lab documents
concerning the faulty kits. He cited 2004 and 2005 test results from two
Indian hospitals in which blood samples that were known to be HIV-positive
instead tested negative during a second, confirmatory test using the
defective kits.
A draft report by Saha and the other doctors warns
of serious quality issues with the kits at blood banks and hospitals between
2003 and 2006. "If people are getting HIV because of defective test kits,
it's horrendous, it's unthinkable," said Saha.
The World Bank's top public health expert in South
Asia, Kees Kostermans, said a bank report on the matter should be completed
in a couple of months. Kostermans said there is no specific evidence of HIV
transmissions due to the faulty kits, which were not purchased directly by
the bank. The bank's partners at India's National AIDS Control Organization
have assured him the kits are no longer being purchased and that none remain
in use, he said.
Saha said he has seen evidence suggesting some of
the flawed kits were in use as recently as April. But Kostermans disputed
this, saying Saha was "mistaken" about the origin and make of the kits he
saw on shelves in India earlier this year. "It is in nobody's interest to
have poor-quality test kits," Kostermans noted.
Washington Post (09.28.07):: Carrie Johnson |
