Of an estimated 2,600 people -- apart from hemophiliacs -- who received treatment with unheated imported blood products in the 1980s, some 1,900 have died, although not all causes of death have not been confirmed, according to Diet testimony Friday.

Yutaka Fukushima, parliamentary vice minister of health and welfare, gave the figures at a meeting of the House of Representatives Committee on Health and Welfare, in response to a question posed by Satoru Ienishi of the Democratic Party of Japan.

Late last month, the ministry began considering taking steps to conduct checkups for hepatitis C for the people who received blood products.

"It would be terrible if people who received such blood products have died as a result of liver cirrhosis or liver cancer," Ienishi said.

Hepatitis C is often passed on through blood transfusions, sexual intercourse or needles shared by drug addicts. It can cause liver cirrhosis, which may lead to liver cancer.

Blood products produced up to the mid-1980s were not pasteurized or heat-treated and were sometimes contaminated by the virus.

"Investigations must be urgently conducted, including into survivors," Ienishi told Fukushima.

Fukushima said the ministry will set up an advisory panel of experts later this month to study measures on the issue.

He also said that among newborns treated with unheated blood products at a general hospital in Shizuoka Prefecture in the 1980s, there are eight suffering from hepatitis C and two others from hepatitis B.

The infections at the Shizuoka hospital came to light after a 20-year-old male, who had an operation at the hospital as a newborn, was found to have contracted hepatitis C this spring.

Ienishi is a hemophiliac infected with HIV who first won a Diet seat in the 1996 Lower House election in the Kinki proportional representation bloc.

He was one of the key members of a group of HIV-infected hemophiliacs and their families who filed a damages suit against five drug makers and the state. The plaintiffs won the legal battle in March 1996.