Bureaucrat Arrested Over Japan HIV Deaths

Japanese prosecutors are continuing their efforts to determine responsibility for the spread of HIV infection among 2000 hemophiliacs who received tainted blood products, and have arrested Akihito Matsumura, a former official of the country's Ministry of Health and Welfare.

Mr Matsumura, head of the Biologics and Antibiotics division, is suspected of failing to issue a recall order for unheated blood products in 1984. He has denied that he was negligent because, he said, the risk of infection was not clearly known at the time. Moreover, he added, he did not have the authority to order pharmaceutical companies to recall products.