Blood banks across China are promising to adopt stricter testing methods to detect viruses in blood after a five year old girl from Fujian Province contracted HIV from an operation requiring blood transfusion.
The Nucleic Acid Test (NAT) will come into effect across the nation by the end of this year, ensuring less chance of infections such as HIV and other blood-borne diseases from blood transfusions. The test works by reducing the time where bacteria or viruses can't be easily seen in blood testing.
It can take up to 20 days to find HIV antigens in the human body. This means that a HIV-positive person could unknowingly pass on the disease to a recipient if they donate within that 20-day period. The NAT halves the waiting period needed to find the HIV virus to just ten days.
National Health and Family Planning Commission spokesperson Mao Qun’an said the girl's diagnosis was "heart-wrenching" but that the NAT will lower the chances of such a case happening again.
The girl underwent surgery in 2010 for congenital heart disease when she was eight months old. She tested positive for HIV in September last year.
[Image via Flickr]
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