A hospital in China has been ordered to pay compensation to the family of a woman who died after contracting HIV from a transfusion of contaminated blood. The government says plasma was bought from farmers by collectors who failed to observe proper procedures. The husband and daughter of the dead woman have also contracted HIV.
The award of up to $1.2m has raised the prospect of an avalanche of similar claims. The case also indicates a scandal involving villagers contracting AIDS from selling blood in central China may have affected other areas when the blood was sent to hospitals which did not screen it.
China has admitted ten of thousands of people could have contracted HIV through selling blood to dealers who used unsanitary collection methods, including pooling the blood in a tub and returning it to the donors after extracting the plasma.
Some independent experts believe as many as one million people could have been infected in this way in one central Chinese province, Henan, alone.
