Japanese Govt Takes Blame For HIV Spread

Japan's Minister of Health and Welfare, Naoto Kan, has acknowledged that the government was responsible for HIV-infected blood products being put on the market during the 1980s and for these products infecting more than 1,800 people, nearly all of them hemophiliacs.

The Minister's acceptance of responsibility followed the discovery of nine 13-year-old files within the Ministry, containing information on research into AIDS. These show that, as far back as 1983 when the files were compiled by a Ministry study group, the government knew that it was possible to contract HIV infection through contaminated blood products. The files have been central to the demand for compensation filed by over 200 hemophiliacs, but the Ministry has always denied that they existed.

Mr Kan said that, having read the files, he could not now understand why the study group concluded in its final report that untreated blood products are safe. He also said that the compensation suits, which remain unsettled even though the first ones were brought to court in 1989, would be settled at an early date.