Three HIV-positive haemophiliacs who appealed publicly last month for the health authorities that sold them an HIV-tainted blood product to be charged were detained by police in Shanghai yesterday. The men were taken away in a car by plain-clothes officers after they left a Shanghai hospital after routine checkups. Up to 30 haemophiliacs gathered outside the municipal government building last night to demand their release. 'They need their medicine by 9pm tonight, their conditions are all acute,' said one of the haemophiliacs outside the building, who gave his name as 'Mao-mao'. He said the trio had participated in a forum about haemophilia in Beijing last month and he believed their detention was related to their appeal at the forum. They were representing 61 other haemophiliacs in Shanghai who all contracted HIV after using Factor VIII, a blood product used in the treatment of the disease made by the state-owned Shanghai Institute of Biological Products. The 64 HIV-positive haemophiliacs had been trying to launch a lawsuit against the institute and the Beijing Municipal Health Bureau for a year, but Shanghai's municipal government rejected their claim. They argued that the authorities should have observed international practices and stopped selling the product because it had not gone through a viral inactivation process, leading them to contract HIV. 'Overseas medical institutions had stopped dispensing blood products without viral inactivation since 1985, and the Beijing Municipal Health Bureau had still not included that process as a requirement in their guidelines regulating biological products issued in 1990 and 1995,' Mao-mao said. The products were only banned in September 1995. Up to 70 haemophiliacs had tested HIV positive in Shanghai between 1995 and 2000, and six of them had died from Aids. In China, there were 650,000 people infected with HIV/Aids at the end of last year.
