SANLIURFA, Turkey
The Turkish health ministry was ordered to pay compensation of more than $625,000 (around 1.4 million Turkish lira) by a court on Monday.
A Turkish court in the southeastern province of Sanliurfa ordered the payment as compensation to a child who was injected with a HIV-tainted blood in 2008.
"I am glad to win the case, but not for the money. I feel like I sold my child," Mehmet, the boy's father, said.
The child, who is known by his initials Y.C., was injected with HIV in an Ankara hospital when he was only 18-months old during his treatment for a second-degree burn after a boiling teapot fell on him.
Having started school last year, the now 7-year old boy told an Anadolu Agency reporter that he wants to be a doctor and pledged not to make any negligent mistakes in his future career.
The father of the boy and his five siblings said that he would spend the money for his health expenses and invest in his child's future.
He also wants to make the pilgrimage to Mecca with his family, who live in a village in Sanliurfa province.
The boy's treatment is ongoing with all expenses covered, while he continues his education "happily."
In Turkey, since 1985 to last year, more than 7,600 people have been registered as HIV positive according to the Health Ministry.
This is only a small share of the 78 million recorded cases of AIDS since the outbreak of the infectious disease began, according to the Turkish Association of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.
In 2013, almost 1,400 new HIV positive individuals were carrying the fatal virus in Turkey - the highest year on record for Turkey so far.
Globally, 2.1 million people were infected in the same year, bringing the current world total to 35 million world-wide.
The ONE campaign, a group dedicated to fighting preventable diseases in Africa, declared that the world reached "the beginning of the end of AIDS" as the number of newly infected people was lower than the previous year for the first time.
www.aa.com.tr/en
