NELLORE – A pregnant woman allegedly got infected with HIV after a blood transfusion on Sunday. The woman’s family members blamed the Red Cross blood bank for supplying the infected blood. Her enraged relatives ransacked the Red Cross society on Monday and the cops had to intervene to pacify the angry protesters.
The 20-year-old woman (name withheld) from Venkateswara colony in Nellore had married a daily wage earner about a year ago. Upon getting pregnant, she was consulting doctors of a private hospital and got admitted to the hospital on November 2.
The doctors asked her husband to get three units of blood from the Red Cross society as she was anemic. She was going to be subjected to caesarean section operation and would have needed blood transfusion. Her husband bought three units of blood from Red Cross society, which the doctors used for the operation.
She was discharged from hospital a week later with mild fever. However, the woman did not get relief from fever even 15 days after being discharged. Her family members again took her to the hospital where she was subjected to tests. To their utter shock, the blood test report said she had tested positive for HIV. With all the blood tests done before the delivery clearly indicating that she was HIV negative, the doctors suspected that the blood infused during the delivery could have been infected.
