The shocking news that nine toddlers in children’s clinics of Shymkent contracted AIDS reached the public late in March. A group of parliament members sent an inquiry to the Health Ministry and demanded a thorough investigation into the case. Furious parents and relatives stormed newspaper offices. Obviously hoping that the incident in Shymkent was an isolated case, health authorities merely tried to calm down passions and resorted to cover-up tactics. In the meantime, the number of children with symptoms of AIDS grew rapidly. When the issue was put on the agenda of the September session of the Security Council and President Nazarbayev publicly announced the dismissal of the heath minister and the governor of the South Kazakhstan region, around sixty children had been reported HIV positive.

Nobody in the cabinet and Health Ministry is willing to accept responsibility for the infection of the children, although numerous investigations into the case showed the occurrence of criminal negligence and substandard blood transfusion equipments. Doctors apparently carried out unauthorized blood transfusions tests without bothering to properly sterilize multiple-use syringes. Former health minister Yerbolat Dosayev, who was later replaced by Anatoliy Dernovoy, shifted the blame on the regional health department of South Kazakhstan and the governor of the region. The latter was replaced by former mayor of Astana Omirzaq Shokeyev, who upon his arrival in Shymkent took harsh measures, sacking the head of the regional health department and some high-ranking officials of the regional government. Dernovoy, the new health minister, said each family of the HIV-infected 76 children will get 8,800 tenghe (ca. $70) every month as compensation for health and moral damages. These measures come too late for six children who died from the infection.

Experts point out that given the poor state of health care infrastructure in Kazakhstan, a disaster of the Shymkent scale could happen in any city and at any time. Many hospitals lack qualified medical workers and use obsolete equipment. Paradoxically, the decline in medical standards takes place at a time when the allocation of funds from the state budget is steadily increasing. It is an open secret to everyone that every year huge amounts of money allocated for regional health care programs are squandered away without trace.

Among other reasons is the high unemployment rate and poverty in densely populated South Kazakhstan, which exceeds the national average level. South Kazakhstan is notorious for abnormally high child mortality rates. Investigations into the infection case in Shymkent revealed that some blood centers provided hospitals with blood donated by unemployed people and Uzbek migrant workers for 100 tenghe. Rampant corruption in medical institutions leave a loophole for poorly trained doctors who work their way to clinics in the big cities through bribes. Health minister Dernovoy disclosed his plans to purge unqualified medical workers from hospitals. But it will definitely take years to remedy the situation in the health care system.

Shymkent came into the limelight because public outcry was strong enough to reach the president’s office. But in other places, the state of health protection is no better. A press release issued by the health ministry on October 1 cites the official registration of 6,943 HIV infected people and 426 people with AIDS. According to the ministry, 369 people died from the disease. Qaraghandy region, with 1,722 cases of HIV infection, holds the first place and is followed by Almaty and Pavlodar regions. The health ministry admits that this year the number of HIV-infected persons increased by a factor of 1.9 compared to last year. Alarmingly, health ministry officials list 86 children under the age of 14 among the HIV-infected.

Some experts attribute the spreading HIV cases to the equally threatening scale of drug addiction. The Deputy Chairman of the committee for struggle against drug trafficking at the Ministry of Interior, Galym Mustafin, said that in seven months, his office seized 114 kilos of heroin and 13 tons of other drugs, but in the same period 99 drug users died as a result of overdoses. The number of registered drug abusers exceeds 54,000.

In pursuit of macroeconomic achievements, Kazakhstan’s government has neglected the social areas, and above all, health care for many years. The eruption of the HIV scandal in Shymkent awakened the authorities to the dangers of that lopsided development. It is unlikely that Kazakhstan’s health care system will be placed on a sound footing so soon without a radical reform and support from the World Health Organization and UN institutions

.