About 10,000 toddlers and 18,000 expectant mothers have been given HIV tests in the city of Shymkent, 1,000 miles south of the capital Astana, and in the surrounding Ongtustik Qazaqstan province since the first cases were detected among local hospital patients. A subsequent probe showed the hospitals had been using contaminated blood for transfusions and that 64 of the country's 156 blood banks had violated safety regulations.
"Seventy-six HIV cases in children and eight cases in mothers have been detected [so far]," Minister Anatoly Dernovoi said. "The infection locus has been contained, but preventive efforts will continue."
Previous reports put at 72 the number of local children who have contracted the virus through hospital negligence, including six fatalities.
Health Minister Yerbolat Dosayev and several other senior officials had to step down over the scandal.
According to official statistics, the post-Soviet country registered 828 new HIV carriers and 70 AIDS patients in the first half of 2006, a 70 percent increase, year-on-year.
