PHR Library

December 27, 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PHR Notes Overturning of Convictions of Bulgarian Nurses and Palestinian Physician Falsely Accused of Intentionally Infecting 400 Children with AIDS and Continues to Call for their Immediate Release

PHR is closely monitoring their case and available for comment

Libya's Supreme Court has overturned the death sentences of six foreign health workers accused of infecting children with HIV.  However, instead of releasing them to return to their home countries and their families, the court has ordered a new trial at the criminal court of Benghazi, thus once more prolonging their six-year ordeal.  The court ruled on an appeal of the five Bulgarian nurses and  Palestinian doctor on December 25, 2005. 

Physicians for Human Rights has called for the immediate release of the health workers who were sentenced to death by firing squad on allegations of intentionally infecting 426 children with HIV at al-Fateh Children's Hospital in Benghazi, Libya.  Experts who have researched the cases have determined that unsafe medical practices caused the infections that spread through the Benghazi hospital in the late 1990s. About 50 of the infected children have reportedly died.  The health workers and their lawyers have claimed that confessions made by the health workers were extracted under torture.  News reports link the latest court decision to an agreement by the US, Britain, the European Union and Bulgaria to set up a support fund to finance the children's medical care.

While PHR supports any and all efforts to provide funds for the medical care of the infected children, the organization is concerned that holding the foreign health workers hostage to the acquisition of a   fund for the infected children sets a dangerous precedent.

Unsafe medical practices have been a hallmark of the global AIDS epidemic, and there have been previous tragic cases of accidental infection, most notably of some 5,000 Romanian orphans in the 1980s. Also in the 1980s, there were cases of Americans receiving blood transfusions in the US who were infected with HIV due to an unsafe blood supply. In the mid-1990s, as many as one million people were infected with the AIDS virus in rural China due to unsafe blood collection practices. Dozens of the Libyan children have already died; hundreds more are now reportedly receiving state-of-the-art medical care in a collaborative project involving the Benghazi Government and a US-based medical institution.

Some analysts believe that as many as 500,000 infections per year worldwide are caused by unclean needles and other unsafe medical practices.

Professor Luc Montagnier, a co-discoverer of the virus that causes AIDS, and Italian microbiologist Vittorio Colizzi sampled viruses from the infected children in 2004 and determined that many of the children had been infected with HIV before the arrival of the nurses and doctor in 1998. Further, the presence of co-contaminants Hepatitis B and C suggests that the victims had been infected by unsanitary conditions at the hospital rather than by any deliberate action.

In May 2004, dozens of the world's leading virologists and AIDS doctors sent an open letter, organized by PHR, to Colonel Gaddafi protesting the death sentence of the health professionals. Signers included both co-discoverers of HIV, Dr. Montagnier and Dr. Robert Gallo, as well as virologist Dr. Ashley Haase, chair of the University of Minnesota’s Department of Microbiology.

PHR has written a report on the issue of medical safety, which is a problem in many countries (see HIV Transmission in Health Care Settings).  

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) mobilizes the health professions to advance the health and dignity of all people by protecting human rights. As a founding member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, PHR shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.