Nurse practitioner to be tried for giving genital warts to 100 children

HUNG YEN, Vietnam — Hung Yen Province People’s Procuracy has completed the prosecution procedures against Nguyen Thi Hien from Da Trach Commune in Khoai Chau District for her violations of regulations on health examination.

According to the investigation forces, Hien started working as a nurse practitioner at Me So Commune Medical Center in 1995. She opened her own clinic in 2015, where she practiced treatment for phimosis, a condition in which the foreskin of the penis cannot be pulled back past the glans.

In 2017, 100 boys who received phimosis treatments at Hien’s private clinic were found to have contracted genital warts.

An examination by the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology detected the presence of both the HPV virus and the HMBS gene of human cells, meaning that unhygienic tools and equipment used in the surgical procedure led to cross-infection of HPV from diseased persons to non-diseased ones.

Hien committed three violations of regulations, including operating the clinic without any qualifications and licences, offering treatments without appropriate qualifications and selling medicines at her private clinic. At the end of 2017, Hien was imprisoned by Hung Yen Province Police. At present, the provincial People’s Procuracy and law enforcement are completing dossiers to start trial proceedings against the doctor.