HIV Donor Still Missing After 5 Months, New Task Force Formed in Satna Thalassaemia Case

Bhopal: More than five months after six thalassaemia-affected children in Satna tested HIV-positive, the mystery of the source donor remains unresolved, prompting the Madhya Pradesh govt to constitute a fresh joint task force to track down the infected blood donor who may still be moving undetected.The new team, led by chief medical and health officer Dr Manoj Shukla, brings together officials from the district hospital, Integrated Counselling and Testing Centre (ICTC), blood bank, state AIDS control society and the food and drug administration. The move signals renewed urgency in a case that has exposed troubling gaps in the blood transfusion chain and raised fears of a wider public health risk.Despite parallel probes by state and central agencies since December, investigators have so far failed to identify the HIV-positive donor believed to have infected at least five of the six children, all of whom were dependent on frequent transfusions for thalassaemia, a lifelong genetic blood disorder. One child is suspected to have acquired the infection vertically from HIV-positive parents. These children regularly had blood transfusions at Satna district hospital, and sometimes they took blood from other places too. Last year, in late November and early December, HIV tests confirmed six children to be positive.Officials admit that the trail has gone cold. Nearly half of the donors linked to the transfusions remain untraceable, and among those identified, only a handful turned up for testing. In several cases, records were found to be incomplete or inaccurate, with wrong phone numbers and addresses complicating efforts to reconstruct the donor network months later.The case already took a darker turn in December when a sting operation exposed alleged middlemen arranging “replacement donors” for money — a practice that investigators believe may hold the key to the missing links. Authorities are now expected to re-examine those leads, including financial transactions and donor timelines, to establish whether any of the unverified donors were HIV-positive at the time of donation.Health experts warn that the continued failure to identify and test all linked donors poses a serious risk beyond the six affected children. If an infected donor has indeed slipped through the system and remains untraced, the possibility of further transmission cannot be ruled out.The newly formed task force has been asked to intensify the donor hunt, verify records afresh and coordinate across agencies to close the gaps that have stalled the probe for months.