Bulgarian Nurses Facing Death over AIDS deaths
Ahhh to be back in the U.S. where newspapers are printed in English! Picked up today’s NY Times in the airport and took a lot of time during my Miami layover to read.
In Libya, five nurses and a doctor are being held in jail and a death sentence looms. They are being accused of infecting 420 children with the AIDS virus. But the nurses tell a different story, that unsanitary conditions in Libya’s hospitals caused the infections, and they are trying desperately to get the world’s attention. Libya is still basking in the glow of international praise for giving up its weapons program….and now the government there has come up with a way out.
They want Bulgaria to pay $10 million for each case of mistaken infection. They liken this to the huge payout they had to make after their agents bombed the Pan Am flight back in 1988. To the nurses, this is absurd….but the Libyans think they’ve come up with a great new way to raise a lot of dough.
October 23, 2005 @ 1:45 am
Well, it is even worse than you state. A number of internationally recognized epidemiologists and health care specialists, including the scientist who is credited with the discovery of the AIDS virus, went to Libya and examined the hospital and hospital procedures first hand; they were the ones who reported in the medical literature that the infections were probably caused by sloppy hospital hygiene. The discoverer of the AIDS virus also found that several of the children had been infected BEFORE the nurses started working there, and a couple were infected AFTER the nurses were arrested and had left the hospital !! The Libyan medical profession has drawn tightly together, apparently embarrassed by the findings that THEIR procedures were the real culprits! But they had been so loudly vocal, that .. as often occurs in situations like this … now they CAN’T back down!Even worse, news media in Libya have sold the story to the people and the people are enraged! This makes it hard for the Government to give, even an inch. haleBlogginTheMaghreb