Seventeen babies and five adults have contracted HIV through infected blood transfusions in Kyrgyzstan. The twenty-two people were infected in different hospitals in the Osh region in the south of the country.
The head of the state AIDS watchdog says the infections were caused by transfusions of blood that had not been tested for HIV. HIV and AIDS levels have rocketed across Central Asia since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 – mainly through drug addicts. The region lies on the main heroin trafficking route from Afghanistan to Europe.