Bookmarkers beware: Bookmarks to pages other than the home page may not work after we change servers in April Editor's Choice | This Week in BMJ | Press releases BMJ No 7126 Volume 316 News Saturday 17 January 1998 Scandal unfolds over blood donation in French prisons A group of 30 doctors and officials, including three former ministers, has been placed under judicial examination for alleged "poisoning and non-assistance to endangered individuals." The four year investigation by the Paris judge Odile Bertella-Geffroy has shown that blood donation in prisons continued until 1986, long after specialists had warned of the high risk of HIV contamination and that the practice was the source of hundreds of cases of HIV infection after transfusion. Moreover, she says that even after the contamination risk became known, recipients were not warned about it, in spite of the risk of transmitting the virus to their spouses or children. Judge Bertella-Geffroy has found that in spite of repeated warnings issued in 1984 and 1985 about the high incidence of HIV infection in prisons, blood donation continued in several large prisons until December 1986. In Bastia (Corsica) and Fort-de-France (Martinique) blood donation in prison was discontinued only in 1990. A 1992 report by the General Inspectorate of Judiciary services and the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs said that in 1985 blood donated in prisons represented only 0.37% of the total donated in France, but was the source of about a quarter of contaminated donations. The number of cases of AIDS attributed to infection through blood transfusion is higher in France than in any other country in the European Union. A survey last December listed 1,686 cases in France, compared with 414 in Italy, 304 in Spain, 122 in the United Kingdom, and 106 in Belgium. The case will be examined by the highest court of appeal. Alexander Dorozynski Paris Home | Current issue | Past issues | Classified ads | Career Focus | Feedback Collections | About this site | About the BMJ | BMA | Medline