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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Browne tells Khan how to improve testing of blood

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20120328

Dr Amery Browne has made rec­om­men­da­tions to Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan to im­prove sys­tems for blood-test­ing at the Blood Bank. He made the rec­om­men­da­tions af­ter read­ing a T&T Guardian sto­ry about a boy who was in­fect­ed with HIV af­ter a blood trans­fu­sion for sick­le-cell dis­ease. The boy, "Kevon," from San­gre Grande, was three at the time. He is now 16.

Browne is a doc­tor and for­mer tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al Aids Co-or­di­nat­ing Com­mit­tee. He is al­so the MP for Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral, Af­ter study­ing the case, Browne said he spoke to Khan, who was quite open to his sug­ges­tions, one of which was vi­ral-load test­ing for do­nat­ed blood.

Browne ex­plained that such a method was used in a "clin­i­cal set­ting" to man­age the progress of a per­son liv­ing with HIV, and not nor­mal­ly used for screen­ing blood. He al­so not­ed that in T&T vi­ral load test­ing was not used for screen­ing blood but the process was used in in­stances where a per­son was al­ready in­fect­ed with the virus to de­ter­mine the lev­el of progress or not of the virus.

"In the Unit­ed States and oth­er parts of the world, vi­ral load-test­ing is done on blood that is do­nat­ed and if this sys­tem is in­tro­duced in Trinidad it will fur­ther help im­prove the lev­el of safe­ty," Browne added. Nev­er­the­less, he said the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an­oth­er such case was "ex­treme­ly rare," and if vi­ral-load test­ing were in­tro­duced, it would re­duce that pos­si­bil­i­ty even fur­ther.

Asked if he knew of any sim­i­lar cas­es, Browne said that was the first of its kind brought to his at­ten­tion lo­cal­ly, but sim­i­lar cas­es ex­ist­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. "And those cas­es would have oc­curred when the HIV pan­dem­ic was just oc­cur­ring, and there would not have been that lev­el of test­ing and screen­ing back then as we have to­day," Browne said.

Theodore Guer­ra, SC, has filed a law­suit on be­half of Kevon, charg­ing that as a re­sult of neg­li­gence and a blood trans­fu­sion with in­fect­ed blood, the child faces a loss of ex­pec­ta­tion of life and en­dures con­stant pain, dis­com­fort and suf­fer­ing.

His moth­er has not told him he is HIV-pos­i­tive.

Mak­ing spe­cif­ic ref­er­ence to the case, Browne said the child had every right to know about his con­di­tion, but that must be re­layed in a hu­mane man­ner through a re­spon­si­ble, car­ing per­son, such as a par­ent or a so­cial work­er. He added: "Every child de­vel­ops dif­fer­ent­ly, emo­tion­al­ly and in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly. The child does have the right to know, and he must get those de­tails from some­one who cares."

He said there were many non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions, apart from so­cial work­ers, who of­fered free coun­selling ser­vices. Since the child al­so af­flict­ed with sick­le-cell dis­ease, Browne said it would re­quire clos­er mon­i­tor­ing. "There are many an­tivi­ral drugs avail­able, and I have known chil­dren who have been born with HIV and be­cause of treat­ment they are young adults to­day."


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