BEIJING, Dec 5, 2006 (AFP) - A group of Chinese AIDS sufferers who contracted the HIV virus from hospital blood transfusions will receive more than 2.5 million dollars compensation in a landmark case, state media said Tuesday.
The hospital in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang which gave them the tainted blood will pay 20 million yuan (2.6 million dollars) in compensation to the victims and their families, China Daily reported.
This includes providing 18 sufferers each a one-off payment of 200,000 yuan, plus 3,000 yuan in monthly payments, the newspaper quoted the group's lawyer as saying.
The hospital will also cover the victims' medical bills until they die.
Relatives of another victim who had already died from the infection will receive over 300,000 yuan from the hospital, the report said.
The case involves the largest reported single group of AIDS victims in China to be infected with HIV from a hospital.
The Beijing Aizhixing Institute, a group dedicated to helping HIV and AIDS sufferers, said the combined pay-out was the biggest in China and followed years of struggle by victims across the country for adequate compensation.
"This will set a good precedent," the institute's director, Wan Yanhai, told AFP.
"This case will help many other sufferers get what they need."
Fifteen of the sufferers in the Heilongjiang group contracted the HIV virus in 2004 after receiving contaminated blood that the hospital had bought from illegal blood sellers.
Three of them then passed the virus onto their spouses and one mother infected her five-year-old child, the report said.
Three staff members at the hospital responsible for the contaminated blood have since been sentenced to between two and 10 years in jail.
Thousands of people in China contracted AIDS through government-backed blood drives in the 1990s. Many of these people were poor farmers who donated blood for money.
People infected through the contaminated blood scandal accounted for 5.1 percent of the 183,733 people confirmed with HIV and AIDS, according to health ministry figures released in November.
However the number of confirmed cases is significantly lower than the estimate of 650,000 put forward jointly by the government and United Nations health agencies in January.
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