U.S. President Barack Obama has signed the HIV Organ Policy Equity (HOPE) Act, which will allow HIV-positive organs to be used in organ transplants by HIV-positive recipients.
On Thursday, November 21, Obama gave hope to HIV-positive donors who want to donate their organs to HIV-positive transplant patients. Previously, the U.S. law under the Organ Transplant Amendments Act of 1988 banned HIV-positive people from donating their organs. Until the recent HOPE Act, HIV and AIDS remained the only medical grounds under which authorities banned a person from becoming an organ donor.
Dr. Dorry Segev, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins Medical Center, who also worked to get the HOPE Act passed, said the new law can assist hundreds and thousands of HIV-positive people in need of organ transplants.
"This is also great news for anyone on a transplant list, because the more organs we have for transplantation, the more lives will be saved," said Segev. "We estimated that there are hundreds of organs that could be used for HIV-positive patients who need them; the more we learn about this practice, the more those transplants will be possible."
Before the HOPE Act, it was even illegal in the U.S. to study HIV-positive organ transplants. Now research on HIV-positive organs can also commence, which can help researchers find means for effective organ transplant between HIV-positive people.
Organ transplantation in the U.S. as well as other countries is very highly regulated and as such, there is no risk of an HIV-negative person to receive an HIV-positive organ even accidentally.
Lifting the current organs ban will not only help save many lives each year, but also it will increase the pool of organ availability, which will in turn reduce Medicare costs associated with organ transplants.
The President has described the HOPE Act as "an important step in the right direction."
