3 patients at K.H.M.H. receive HIV tainted blood

The news coincidentally follows on the heels of a story we ran last night on the blood bank and the need for donors in advance of the long holiday weekend. A release late this evening from the K.H.M.H. reports that three of the hospital’s patients may have been exposed to HIV infected blood. The release continues that hospital authorities were informed at nine-fifteen this morning and all relevant protocols have been put in place to best care for the patients. Due to the late hour no top officials at K.H.M.H. could be reached for comment, but News 5 has learned that the suspected victims are a thirty-two year old woman and two children. It is not known if the three are related, but they all received blood transfusions–apparently with HIV contaminated blood–around the twenty-ninth of March. Details of how this could have happened are not clear at this time, particularly in view of the insistence by medical authorities that all blood at the Belize Blood Donor service is screened for HIV before it is used.