The story began on August 18. That day, two little boys aged 7 are playing on a picnic area, located in the village of Étables-sur-Mer (Côtes d’Armor). In the bushes they find used syringes. A few hours later, during the evening, the children admit to their parents that they “played doctors” with the medical equipment …
Obviously, parents panic: the risk is of course the AIDS, a virus that is transmitted primarily through the blood. The children are taken urgently to Yves-Le Foll hospital in Saint-Brieuc, where they receive blood tests. The doctors then decide not to take any risks and prescribe a preventive triple therapy to the two boys.
The emergency triple therapy, it is a preventive treatment which has been available to the French public since 1998 and reimbursed by Social Security. In practice, this means taking tablets by mouth to avoid infection with HIV. Health professionals recommend it to all people who fear having been exposed to the virus: its effectiveness is estimated at around 80%, if taken within 48 hours of the risky situation.
Initially prescribed for 5 days, treatment for the two children was extended for 28 days. “Many uncertainties remain,” explains Dr Claude Beuscart, who has taken charge of the young patients. The children had fun pushing the syringe plunger. However, we do not even know if these syringes contained blood. The risk of AIDS transmission is therefore considered to be “intermediate”.
According to the newspaper West France, who relayed this story, the two children are suffering from the side effects of emergency triple therapy. Indeed, this treatment, if it is effective, also causes certain ailments: diarrhea, nausea, stomach aches etc. Shocked, the family would consider filing a complaint against X for “endangering the life of others”.
AIDS: One in 2 men with the virus does not take treatment.
