Parents of HIV infected children in Kalmykia are dissatisfied with the sums of compensations

The parents whose children were HIV infected in 1988-1989 and who won their case against the Republican Children's hospital in the court of the town of Elista are dissatisfied with the judgment.

It should be reminded that yesterday, November, 9, the court brought a verdict of cost recovery by the Republican Children's hospital in Kalmykia on compensation for moral damage to a sum of one hundred thousand rubles to each of the seven plaintiffs while each aggrieved family demanded five million rubles compensation for moral damage.

"One hundred thousand rubles compensation for a lost child is a mockery. They pay three million for substitution of a child in maternity hospitals and now the parents are offered one hundred thousand rubles for their murdered children", Ochir Shovgurov, representative of the plaintiffs' pressure group, said to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

"We tried to right a wrong by ourselves but they got hard on us with legal terms and rejected our demands saying that we had no such rights until we finally consolidated our efforts and filed an appeal", Irina Shovgurova, one of the aggrieved parents, says.

"I did not appeal to court because I was living with my grief and such an idea did not even come to my mind. I just wished to forget this nightmare. But now some of the parents have already retired and are in need of money", Victoria, another aggrieved person, says.

Her son Edik was infected with human immunodeficiency virus when he was ten months old and he died at the age of three years and a half. "Only my relatives knew of the child disease and no one else. I lived as a hermitess and guarded my child from outsiders. When someone came to see me I used to leave home… My son had regular haemorrhages", the woman recalls.

On learning that there was a family with HIV infected members in the settlement of Oling, Yashkul district, the residents wanted to burn them down alive for their children not to play with the sick child, Maria Sholdaeva told us. "Nobody wanted to employ me, even as a milker. My record of service was broken and I am now receiving a pension of 4400 rubles. I cannot get some treatment with this money and I have a lot of problems with my health", the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent's interlocutor says.

The parents have yet taken no decision on their further actions.

Most of the children injured by the medical personnel's negligence are already dead but there are girls among them who survived, got married and gave birth to babies, the parents say.

According to the Ministry of Public Health and Social Development of Kalmykia, today 44 persons receive allowances of 22 844 rubles a month. Sixteen parents get 600 rubles a month from the Government for care of their sick children. Last year 12 families of HIV infected persons got 42 thousand rubles each on burial, this year eight families have received the same sum.

There are no comments on the verdict of the court from the defendant yet.