First Charge In Japanese HIV Tainted Blood Scandal

Takeshi Abe, head of the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare's AIDS task force in 1983-84, has become the first person to be charged in the HIV-contaminated blood scandal. He is accused of professional negligence.

Dr Abe is charged with responsibility for administration of an HIV-contaminated blood coagulant made by Green Cross to a hemophiliac, who then developed AIDS and died in December 1991, six and a half years after treatment. His arrest and charging follows a criminal complaint brought in March by the mother of the patient, who was treated at Teikyo University Hospital in Tokyo during April-May 1986 by a team of doctors advised by Dr Abe.

The prosecution says Dr Abe could have foreseen a high rate of certainty that continued use of untreated blood products would cause HIV infection, because he had been informed by US experts in September 1984 that 23 of his 48 patients treated with the products had become infected. Therefore, the charge says, Dr Abe was professionally obliged to stop the use of unheated products, but he neglected these obligations. He is accused of protecting Japanese blood product manufacturers by delaying MHW approval of safe, heat-treated products made overseas.