Chinese court slaps prison terms over hospital AIDS contamination

Asian Economic News, Jan 31, 2005

BEIJING, Jan. 28 Kyodo

A Chinese court has sentenced two former health officials in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region to prison for their role in hospital blood transfusions that led to AIDS infections, official media said Friday.

The Qingshuihe County People's Court sentenced both Li Zhanping, former director of the country's Health Bureau, and his former deputy Yang Fei to three-year terms for neglecting the law, causing 11 people to get the HIV virus over four years from transfusions of tainted blood, Xinhua News Agency reported.

From November 1999 to November 2003, Qingshuihe Hospital violated blood donation and clinical procedure laws by letting 18 sick people donate blood without using proper equipment or procedures, then passing it on to patients, Xinhua reported.

Two of the 11 who got HIV from the transfusions passed it on to family members, and one died, the news agency said.

Police in the affected county are also investigating five other people, including the former hospital director, on suspicion of neglecting their duties and illegally collecting blood, Xinhua said.

''There is already a law, and in bigger cities or in standardized hospitals it's OK, but in other parts of China there isn't enough blood, or it's good business (to sell blood),'' said Zhou Xingping, an AIDS relief researcher and volunteer from Beijing.

He said people in at least five provinces have sued over HIV-tainted blood transfusions and that one won the case. Most lose for lack of evidence, he said.

A retired employee of China Centers for Disease Prevention and Control said infected patients routinely file lawsuits and related complaints to prosecutors, but he called the Qingshuihe court ruling a ''special case.''

''I've never seen before the people who should take responsibility getting punished,'' he said.