A YOUNG girl has had to have an HIV blood test after pricking her finger on a discarded hypodermic needle.

The child, aged 5, drew blood when she came across the syringe in the garden of an empty house on a Bolton estate.

She had been playing a few doors down from her home on Grisdale Road, Deane, when the accident happened, sparking off a nightmare for her family.

The accident happened the day after Home Office minister Tom Sackville, Bolton MP for Bolton West, visited council housing half a mile away, off Hulton Lane, and branded it "a vision of hell".

The girl's angry mother said: "The empty house is only doors away and has been allowed to deteriorate.

"Initially, when it was repossessed, junkies used to go inside it and when the council boarded it up, they found loads of drugs.

"Now it seems the junkies just use the garden.

"My daughter had to go through a very traumatic incident. We rushed her off to hospital but she was so shaken that five people had to hold her down while they did the tests.

"For a 20 minute kick these junkies could have endangered my child's entire life.

"It is not only my daughter who is at risk, but all the children in the neighbourhood play in the garden.

"The way I feel at the moment, I think I would kill anyone I saw using drugs"

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