One of Taiwan’s best regarded hospitals said HIV-infected organs were mistakenly transplanted into five patients after a hospital staffer misheard the donor’s test results by telephone.
The five are now being treated with anti-AIDS drugs, an official at National Taiwan University Hospital in Taipei said Monday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because she is not authorized to deal with the media.
The hospital said on its website over the weekend the mistake occurred because a transplant staffer believed he heard the English word “non-reactive” on the donor’s standard HIV test, while the word “reactive” was actually given.
The information on the test result was given over the telephone and was not double-checked, as required by standard procedures, the hospital statement said.
“We deeply apologize for the mistake,” the hospital said.
The Health Department will look into the mistake and decide on possible penalties for NTUH, department official Shih Chung-liang said. If negligence was found to have caused the blunder, Shih said the hospital may have to suspend its transplant programs for up to a year in addition to unspecified fines.
The donor was a 37-year-old man who fell into a coma on Aug. 24 and his heart, liver, lungs and two kidneys were transplanted to five patients on the same day. NTUH said it transplanted four organs and the heart transplant was conducted at another hospital.
The donor’s mother, who was not identified, told cable news stations that she felt terrible about the transplants and had not been aware of her son’s ailment. She said he died after “falling from a high spot,” without providing details.
Yao Ke-wu, who heads the health department of Hsinchu city, where the donor resided, decried the NTUH transplants as “appalling negligence.”
He said NTUH staffers could have avoided the mistake by asking his department about the donor’s medical history in advance and deplored that such inquiries were not mandatory in Taiwan.
Yao said the five organ receivers will very likely contract HIV and their treatment will be complicated because they also have to take medication to avoid rejection of the new organs.
The five recipients are Taiwanese. NTUH is among about a dozen well-equipped and highly-respected Taiwanese hospitals offering organ transplants.
There are also concerns among the physicians and nurses who conducted the transplants that they too may contract HIV. Medical staffers routinely take protections against bodily fluids during surgeries, but some experts also warned needle and other accidential cuts could still expose them to HIV.
Lee Nan-yao, a physician with the National Chengkung University Hospital, which performed the heart transplant, told the United Daily News that some physicians and nurses who had conducted the transplant “were depressed, and on the verge of panic.”
What is the sense of suing the hospital. can money ever replace a negative status? can it relace loosing your wife or husband due to the fact you came in to the hospital with a HIV negative status and you are leaving positive through no fault of yours. Can it replace the depression that is to come? can it replace taking medications for the rest of your life? Can it repalce the days of being terribly sick and many hospital days? what is the use of the money when you life got screwed. Money is not all. That worker must be feeling rather terrible maybe on the verge of suiccide. Wow that is something else it is irreversable. Sad but true, I guess we will all learn from this.
The truth
“as a well informed final year medical student, I can assure you that HIV as eatmeat has clarified, is not the devastating illness it once used to be, PROVIDED there is access to the FDA antiretroviral therapy, and provided that the illnes is treated in time , in order to suppress the viral titres.
I study at University College Cork in Ireland and numerous professors have clarified that being HIV positive most certainly is not a death sentence, and that, compared to other illness particularly diabetes type 1 and 2, it is preferable, considering the potentially debilitating side effects of DM such as blindness, kidney failure, foot disease etc.
However I acknowledge that these patients will be immunosuppressed during their anti-rejection therapy so i respect your viewpoint and it is correct.
You can compare HIV to a terminal cancer. I am sure many people who are terminally ill with cancer with a few months to live or less than a year would trade it for HIV & be able to live a normal lifespan. HIV is not AIDS as the two are completely different as a HIV positive person is not a person with AIDS … You can’t compare a person with AIDS with cancer, but you can compare HIV to a terminal cancer.
omg i can’t even imagine something like dat..i can imagine what these patients are going through..This is such a HUGE mistake and that hospital needs to be sued!!!
Mistakes do happen but i think that hospital should be more responsible by taking a background check on the donor..That’s just tooooo irresponsible!!!
OMG, what am I hearing? I’m just shivering. With all of these up to date technologies in these developing countries, how could these medical personnels make such mistakes? Even though there was no back ground checks on the donor, several tests were supposed to be carried out on these organs by these surgeons before performing these transplants.
Now what are they going to say to these patients and their family, I do hope that the hospitals have enough funds in their Bank account for when they are being sued
That could have happened to me, that is just pure carelessness. My hears goes out to these patients