India's HIV tests under scrutiny

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 (UPI) -- An AIDS specialist for the World Bank said defective HIV testing kits were distributed in India as recently as April.

Kunal Saha told The Washington Post that he has been warning officials for months about the problem in India, where nearly 3 million people are believed to have HIV.

The World Bank said it is finalizing a report on the issue but Saha said he is taking the issue public because of the danger of HIV being transmitted in India is too great, the newspaper said Friday.

World Bank public health specialist Kees Kostermans said India's National AIDS Control Organization has assured him that substandard test kits were no longer in use.

Saha, who traveled in India in March and April, said he found a document suggesting that questionable kits were available for use at the time. Kostermans told the Post that he believed Saha was mistaken about the origin and make of the test kits he saw.

"It is in nobody's interest to have poor-quality test kits," Kostermans told the newspaper.

Copyright 2007 by United Press International

NewsTrack: India's HIV tests under scrutiny