A nurse in Vietnam has been sentenced to jail for 10 years, for violating the medical regulations. In a case of negligence, the nurse infected 117 children with genital warts, a disease which first saw an outbreak in July 2017 with more than 80 boys, maximum aged below 2 years.

Due to this negligence, the nurse was found guilty by Hung Yen Province People’s Court in Northern Vietnam, which barred her from doing her practice for 3 years after her release from jail.

The court also ordered the nurse to pay compensation of more than 2.2 billion Dong to the families, that amounts to a total of $94,850. This amount is to be distributed to 111 of the 117 families of victims. The remaining 6 families failed to prove whether the nurse was the only cause of their children’s infection or not.

This amount will help the parents to find a doctor who can prescribe the most appropriate treatment for genital warts in children.

As per the findings of the court, the nurse ran an unlicensed medical service at her own home, where she used to examine the genitals of the children. For each treatment, the nurse charged up to VND 520,000. The reason why children acquired genital warts was because the nurse was using unsterilized equipment to treat the children.

The treatment was given for phimosis. Phimosis is a condition in which the tight foreskin of the penis cannot be pulled back over the head. For treating phimosis, the foreskin has to be widened. But since the equipment to widen the foreskin was unsterilized, children contracted human papillomavirus (HPV), which subsequently led to the genital warts.