The children, aged five to sixteen, all suffer from the hereditary blood disorder Thalassaemia, which requires patients to undergo regular transfusions.
Saira Afzal Tarar, Minister of National Health Services Regulation and Coordination, slammed the case as "shocking" and promised an investigation.
"I have sought reports about the incident and I am also writing to the provincial governments about it," she said.
"The people responsible should be punished and punished very severely," said Javed Akram, vice chancellor of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences.
"Somebody struggled with a lifelong disease and you gave them another lifelong disease," he said.
Akram said the number of children affected was likely to increase as more Thalassaemia patients underwent testing.
"We have offered them free-of-cost treatment, treating both HIV-AIDS as well as Thalassaemia," he said.
Dr Yasmin Rashid, secretary general of the Thalassaemia Federation of Pakistan, said the affected children were from Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Lahore, though it was hard to pinpoint at this stage which blood banks were the culprits.
"All these children go through multiple transfusion centres. If they don't go through one centre they go from another centre."
Rashid said that while some transfusion centres screen for Hepatitis B and C, they do not normally test for HIV.
Pakistan is considered a low prevalence country for HIV, with UNAIDS estimating that less than 0.05 percent of the general population is infected.
But the disease is expanding among injecting drug users, sex workers, and migrant labourers returning from the Gulf.
Thalassaemia prevents the production of haemoglobin and affects an estimated 50,000 people in the country.
COMMENTS (7)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ
This is disguisting seriously,who had given them the right to play with the life of children who have the rest of life infront of them! Horrible indeed.
This is the result of the "challai ga" attitude
The peopel at fault, no matter who they are friends or relatives of, should be charged with manslaughter.
How very sad we have fallen so low.
Should we ask the British to come back and run the country again for 5 years so we can figure out difference between right and wrong again?
This is extremely unfortunate inhuman criminal negligence at the hands of those entrusted with our lives. This act must be punished publicly. Health minister should take moral responsibility of this act as a failure. Most disturbing news.
Long time ago, I donated my blood in a camp organized for helping Thalasaemia suffering children. They not only performed CBC on my blood, but also tested it for HIV and many other kinds of infections as well before administering it to some patient. They also provided me a copy of the test results later.. I wonder what has happened now. Have they stopped testing the blood before administering, or are using defective test kits for screening due to corruption? In any case, whoever is responsible, must be charged for murder and made an example of for playing with the life of already suffering innocent children.
Height of negligence :(
This country is so unbelievable that its unbelievable how unbelievable it is. Shocked.