HIV Scandal Rumbles on

Even though more children have been diagnosed with HIV in a long-running scandal at hospitals in southern Kazakstan, commentators say a high-profile trial against health professionals accused in the case is unlikely to lead to fundamental changes to the health service.



On March 25, representatives from an AIDS centre in Shymkent announced that the number of children infected with HIV in the South Kazakstan region has reached 103.



The scandal began last May, when significant numbers of children in medical institutions in Shymkent were diagnosed with the virus after receiving transfusions of contaminated blood. By October 2006, when the health ministry said the surge in infections had been contained, the number of cases had reached 78.



An investigation was launched in September and led to the resignations of Health Minister Yerbolat Dosaev and provincial governor Bolat Jylkishiev.



In an ongoing trial which began in early January this year, 21 healthcare professionals from South Kazakstan stand accused of taking bribes, misappropriating funds, negligence and unprofessional conduct.



Dr Sergei Krivzov says rank-and-file medical workers will probably take a disproportionate amount of the blame, even though the investigation has cast its net wide.



“The court hearings are examining the errors that were made – but our entire medical system is dogged by errors. Everyone will be punished, but to different degrees,” said Krivzov.



However, Yekaterina Chirva, a reporter from a local newspaper called South Kazakstan who has followed the scandal from the beginning, says it has become such a public case that minor figures will not be used as scapegoats. She believes everyone all the way up to the top will be brought to account, because Kazak president Nursultan Nazarbaev is personally overseeing the way the affair is handled.



But the level of close scrutiny accorded to this case, Chirva does not think Kazakstan’s health service is heading for a root-and-branch reform. She argues that nepotism, corruption, and the dearth of professional staff due to the country’s poor medical education all militate against this kind of change.



Chirva said the new head of South Kazakstan’s regional health department, Vyacheslav Dudnik, is being victimised because he is seen as an outsider. “Dudnik is being publicly taunted in the media and during open meetings, and the same happens to the people he has appointed,” she said.



Krivzov noted that Dudnik, an ethnic Russian, is under fire for not knowing the Kazak language.



“What can you say if the main thing against Dudnik is that he doesn’t know the Kazak? He has come here like Hercules to the task of cleaning the Augean stables, not to show off his linguistic skills.”



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)