Haemophiliacs denied compensation
A court turns down plaintiffs' claim they were infected with HIV from blood products, despite finding for another group
Five haemophiliacs have lost their case against a Shanghai research institute for allegedly manufacturing a tainted blood product that infected them with HIV.
The Changning District Court ruled that the plaintiffs, who are from outside the city, could not prove that the Factor VIII clotting agent made by the state-owned Shanghai Biological Products Research Institute infected them with the virus.
However, the plaintiffs have been treated differently to those from Shanghai. In 2002, the court ordered the establishment of a compensation fund to settle claims for some of the 55 Shanghai haemophiliacs known to have contracted the virus after using Factor VIII.
The fund provides each person or their relatives with 100,000 yuan in compensation plus free medicine and a monthly subsidy of 1,000 yuan if the patient is still alive.
But the court stopped short of blaming the Shanghai institute for selling tainted blood products because when it produced Factor VIII, the use of heat treatment and HIV-screening devices were not compulsory.
In its latest ruling, the court said: 'The Ministry of Health has made it clear that the state will give free anti-HIV treatment to Aids patients with economic difficulties. So this case should be solved in line with local public health policy.'
Yang Shaogang, a lawyer from the Shanghai Jiuhui Law Firm representing the five out-of-town plaintiffs, said: 'It is ridiculous that a court ruled not according to law, but according to government policy. The government is not supposed to interfere with justice.'
Mr Yang said he was not confident of the chances of an appeal. 'The court has to report to the Ministry of Health as well as follow the orders of the Supreme Court.'
The local court allowed only written evidence when it heard three of the cases last August.
After postponing judgment twice, it sent its judgment to the five hemophiliacs on March 22 without hearing the other two cases.
Kong Delin, the Shanghai-based deputy director of Haemophilia Home of China, said the court took so long to hand down a ruling because it was aware it would set a precedent for all out-of-town haemophiliacs with HIV/Aids, meaning a potentially heavy cost on the government.
Mr Kong claimed to have been told by insiders that Shanghai officials determined that the city had fewer than 100 such haemophiliacs before they 'dared' to make the decision to compensate them.
He said the Shanghai figures indicated that about 10 per cent of those treated with Factor VIII had been infected with HIV.
While the Shanghai institute has not released any information about the sale and manufacture of Factor VIII, Mr Kong claimed one of its senior officials privately said about 10,000 haemophiliacs on the mainland were treated with the agent before production stopped in 1995.
'This came 10 years too late,' Mr Kong said.
German scientists developed a heat treatment which eliminates the virus from blood products in 1985, but the central government did not make the process compulsory until May 1995, two months after the Aids epidemic in Henan province was exposed.
Plaintiff Liu Gu said: 'I believe the government cannot dodge blame forever. But for us it's a matter of whether we will live long enough to see justice done.'
