An HIV-positive Indian teenager in a critical state was tied to his hospital bed among patients of infectious diseases, media reported Friday.
The semi-conscious boy, who was not named in keeping with Indian law against identifying people with HIV-AIDS, had been strapped to the bed with bandages "to keep him from falling off", the Times of India said.
The 15-year-old, who cannot speak as a lesion in the brain has paralysed his right side, was brought from a juvenile jail to the hospital in Meerut city, 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of New Delhi.
The newspaper, which put a picture of the boy with his face blurred on the front-page, said hospital authorities had totally failed the boy, who was dying.
He had been kept among patients with tuberculosis, which is highly infectious, and had bed sores.
An attendant would give the patient two biscuits daily, while doctors fed him glucose intravenously.
"He is tied up only so he does not pull out his (intravenous) tubes, and not out of any callousness," additional district magistrate Manvendra Singh, told the daily.
Other officials said they would try to shift the boy to one of New Delhi's premier hospitals.
People with AIDS/HIV in India are sometimes denied access to schools and hospitals and face ostracism.
A teenaged boy committed suicide earlier this month after being publicly humiliated over his parents HIV-positive status.
In May, Geneva-based UNAIDS said India had 5.7 million people living with HIV/AIDS — the highest figure in the world, ahead of South Africa where the figure stands at 5.5 million. The government says the number is 5.2 million.
