The Tokyo District Court on Friday found a former health ministry senior bureaucrat guilty of professional negligence after he approved the continued use of HIV-tainted blood products, causing the death from AIDS of a patient.
Akihito Matsumura, 60, former head of the biologics division of the then Health and Welfare Ministry, was sentenced to one year in prison, suspended for two years.
According to the court, Matsumura failed to take necessary measures to prevent the patient, who was being treated for a liver ailment, being administered the product even though he could have anticipated the consequences of allowing the use of blood products at the time. The patient was given the infected coagulant in April 1986.