WHO blames 'gross editing error' for report claiming half of new cases are acquired deliberately by people trying to claim benefits

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

The World Health Organisation has been forced to retract claims that crisis-hit Greeks are intentionally injecting themselves with the HIV virus to collect state benefits almost two months after the shocking allegation was revealed in a report that triggered global media coverage.

Blaming the mistake on an "editing error", the Geneva-based body issued an unreserved apology on Tuesday, saying it had been wrong to claim that "about half" of the debt-stricken country's new HIV infections had been self-inflicted.

"The report incorrectly states that, in Greece, 'HIV rates and heroin use have risen significantly, with about half of new HIV infections being self-inflicted to enable people to receive benefits of €700 per month and faster admission on to drug substitution programmes'.

"This statement," it continued, "is the consequence of an error in the editing of the report."

As outrage grew, not least in Greece, the international agency issued a second mea culpa in which it not only apologised for the error but offered further clarification. "The [offending] sentence should read, "Half of the new HIV cases are self-injecting and out of them few are deliberately inflicting the virus'."

"This was just a gross editing error for which the WHO apologises," said its spokesman, Gregory Hartl.

Earlier, Hartl had taken to Twitter where he attributed the mistake to a "typo", adding: "People are not giving themselves HIV in Greece to get benefits."

Published in September by WHO's European office, the report was based on findings prepared by University College London's Institute of Health Equity.

Part of a bigger survey on Europe's growing health divide, the agency said the claim had been based on observations made in 2011 by a Greek researcher in the medical journal The Lancet.

Greece's prolonged economic crisis – the nation is now mired in a sixth straight year of recession – has sparked a public health crisis that has seen infectious diseases soar.

The HIV rate has nearly tripled over the past decade, according to the Hellenic Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Keelpno).

Last week, in one of the most dramatic signs yet of the toll the debt drama is having, the National School of Public Health announced that the life expectancy of Greeks had dropped from 81 to 78 years since the outbreak of the crisis four years ago. Suicides and homicides have also shot up as Greeks grapple with record rates of unemployment (at 27% the highest in the eurozone) and deepening poverty.

"In a climate that is very negative drug users in particular have become ever more self-destructive," said Babis Poulopoulos, Greece's leading authority on drug rehabilitation. "To say that people are deliberately injecting themselves with HIV, however, is absurd. It's not benefits which are their incentive, it's life. They have lost the motivation to live," he told the Guardian.

As a result of internationally mandated cuts, the country, which has been forced to survive on EU-IMF rescue funds since May 2010, has not only slashed hospital budgets but welfare benefits.

Government records show that monthly handouts have dropped from €700 to €569 for HIV carriers in the past year.