It is an illustration of the many ways in which untold suffering can be inflicted on people when the state is unable to turn its intentions into reality.

Health authorities in Islamabad have discovered that two siblings, an eight-year-old girl and her younger brother, have been infected with HIV. The children already have a blood platelet function disorder, due to which they have been receiving transfusions from different hospitals in the twin cities since 2010.

The HIV virus they are carrying was discovered in November, when the girl fell ill. Since neither of the parents are HIV positive, the likely cause is that at some point, in one of the many health facilities where they were treated, they were given contaminated blood during transfusion. The tragic irony is that their father is an employee of the hospital managed by the Capital Development Authority.

On Thursday, the National Commission on Human Rights took suo motu notice of the matter; it intends to institute an inquiry into what kind of steps are taken by health facilities and departments to create awareness about the dangers of contaminated blood.

Reportedly, the NCHR is already carrying out an assessment in this regard of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, one of the largest public-sector hospitals in the area. The exercise is to be expanded to include more hospitals. The needs of the ailing children mentioned above, meanwhile, will now be administered to by the National Aids Control Programme.

Instituting an inquiry is all very well, but much more needs to be done particularly in view of the high incidence of blood-borne diseases in the country. The issue is much larger than HIV/AIDS alone, serious though these are.

Hepatitis B and C, for example, both of which can be contracted through even the most minimal contact with infected blood, amongst other means of transmission, affect an estimated 15 million people in the country — or every 13th Pakistani. Malarial parasites, too, can be transmitted through blood. Then there are other realities such as the relatively high numbers of thalassaemia sufferers — a consequence of the common cultural practice of marriage between cousins.

It is absolutely imperative that Pakistan clean up its act in the context of infected blood in health facilities — and that it does so on an urgent basis.

Laws on this front started being devised in the late 1990s and, after devolution, new laws are being looked into. Most recently, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government was mulling over the KP Blood Transfusion Safety Authority Act, 2016. But new laws will only work if there is a sincere attempt to enforce them, and this is where the challenge is the greatest.

Regulation, oversight and accountability in the donation and transfusion of blood are among the most basic needs of the healthcare sector and their absence must be addressed immediately.

Published in Dawn February 4th, 2017