Teen with HIV who donated blood tries to kill self

Compiled by OH ING YEEN and R. ARAVINTHAN 

A TEENAGER who donated blood without knowing he was HIV positive tried to commit suicide after finding out it caused a woman to contract the virus.

Tamil Nesan reported that the 19-year-old boy in Tamil Nadu had been donating blood since 2016.

He also donated blood early this month for a relative who needed a transfusion but it wasn’t known then that he had the virus.

He only found out about his condition when he underwent a full blood test as part of his application to work in a foreign country.

A 23-year-old woman in a government hospital who received the blood transfusion with the tainted blood was confirmed to have been infected.

After the police and medical investigators questioned the teenager about his blood donations, he reportedly tried to commit suicide by drinking poison but survived the attempt.

He said he was unaware of his condition and would not have donated blood if he had known.

He also questioned how the blood banks and hospitals had missed such a diagnosis in their screenings.

 

Found in translation is compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.