The two hospitals involved in mistakenly transplanting organs from an HIV-infected donor into five patients were fined NT$150,000 (US$5,172) each as an initial penalty for their negligence, the Department of Health said yesterday.
The Taipei and Greater Tainan governments have been asked to issue the fines to National Taiwan University Hospital and National Cheng Kung University Hospital respectively, department spokesman Wang Che-chao (王哲超) said.
The punitive decision was taken during a meeting of a task force formed earlier in the day to investigate the case.
The fines were meted out in accordance with Article 11 of the HIV Infection Control and Patient Rights Protection Act (人類免疫缺乏病毒傳染防治及感染者權益保障條例), which requires medical institutions to conduct HIV tests on potential donors before proceeding with any organ or tissue transplant.
Violators can be fined between NT$30,000 and NT$150,000 in accordance with Article 22 of the act, Wang said.
“Follow-up punishments can be laid down in tandem with the findings of subsequent investigations,” he added.
The Taipei Prosecutors’ Office also began to investigate the cases on Tuesday.
The transplants — four at National Taiwan University Hospital and one at National Cheng Kung Hospital — were performed on Aug. 24.
The hospitals only realized two days later that the donor was HIV positive.
Before the operations, the National Taiwan University Hospital transplant team relied only on a telephone conversation to get the results of HIV tests conducted on the organs, and it thought it was given the green light when in fact the organs had tested positive for HIV.
Cheng Kung took the other transplant team’s word that the organs were clean and went ahead with its heart transplant.
National Taiwan University Hospital admitted on Aug. 27 that its medical team did not follow standard operating procedures and that it should have checked for the test results on the computer before proceeding.
Chen said the reasons for the problem and details of the procedures would be spelled out in a report to be submitted to the health department.
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