The Supreme Court earlier this month upheld a suspended prison sentence for a former health ministry official who had been found guilty of failing to prevent the sale and use of HIV-contaminated blood products that resulted in the death of a patient suffering from impaired liver function. It concluded more than 11 years of criminal investigations and trials linked to the 1980s' HIV outbreak caused by tainted blood products. AIDS caused by the infection killed more than 600 people, many of them hemophiliacs.
Although the top court decision concerned just one bureaucrat, it should be taken as a ruling aimed at the entire health ministry concerning its handling of the blood products in question. Government officials in charge of medical and pharmaceutical affairs should examine their behavior.
In September 2001, the Tokyo District Court sentenced the official, who headed the health ministry's biologics division from July 1984 to June 1986, to one year in prison, suspended for two years. The Tokyo High Court upheld the ruling in March 2005. The high court said that, toward the end of 1985, he could have foreseen that continued use of the unheated blood products would cause spread of HIV infection.