California legislators have approved Senate Bill 1408, in which HIV-positive donors could now transfer organs to an HIV-positive patient. The law change was made due to the critical condition of a patient in San Francisco Medical Center.
Current state law forbids the transfer of any issues among HIV-positive patients. Before carrying out any transplants, donors are tested, and they must be and found nonreactive for Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) to be candidates for tissue organs.
On Friday, however, the emendation above exposed has been removed by Senate Bill 1408. The bill was written by California’s Senator, Ben Allen, and subsequently sent to Governor Jerry Brown for a signature. Thus, HIV-organs transplants are no longer illegal as part of an urgent legislation that included a surgery of an HIV-patient in bad shape.
Gov. Brown has promptly signed the bill, and it has taken effect immediately. HIV-infected patients could not transfer or receive tissues in California and more than a dozen states from the U.S.
Since 2013, a legislation allowed transplants’ trials on HIV-patients and since then, safety regulations regarding this topic have been made. The most recent one gives HIV-positive patients a possibility for life just around the corner. According to Sen. Ben Allen, with SB 1408, lots of lives will be saved from this month and so on.
The recently adopted legislation, Senate Bill 1048, will allow the transfer of any tissues from HIV-positive patients. The HIV-donors could be alive or dead.
Urgent legislation
This week, a transplant surgeon from San Francisco attended to the Capitol with the aim of seeking help for one of his patients. Dr. Peter Stock asked lawmakers for a provision for a patient of his, who had a deteriorated liver and whose condition had gotten worse in the last few weeks. Stock’s patient is infected and due to his critical health condition, and the patient had no time to remain on the long waiting list. Hence, Dr. Stock has supported his intervention in the Capitol by arguing that California has the nation’s longest waiting list for organs. In a case of approval, the provision will help his patient and others.
Furthermore, Stock has added that his patient counted on a living donor, who had voluntarily offered part of his liver. Surgeries procedures were done earlier this month, but, the San Francisco Medical Center needed a law provision to let the surgeon perform the liver transplant.
The donor was also infected and, he was the patient’s husband. The Senate Bill 1408 was unanimously accepted by the United States Congress.
Source: Legislature