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Johns Hopkins Hospital Approves First HIV-Positive Organ Transplant

The move will save thousands of lives each year.

Johns Hopkins Hospital announced Monday it would perform the first organ transplant between an HIV-positive donor and recipient, offering new hope to the thousands of HIV-positive patients who die each year due to a previous ban on such procedures.

The hospital said in a press release that two transplant surgeries between HIV-positive patients, one liver and one kidney, were scheduled immediately after it received approval to perform them.

The New York Times notes that medical facilities were forbidden from transplanting the organs of HIV-positive people from the beginning of the AIDS crisis in 1988 until 2013, when President Obama signed the HIV Organ Policy Equity Act into law.

Dr. David Klassen, chief medical officer for the United Network for Organ Sharing, told the paper that the ban was enacted initially because giving HIV-positive patients donated organs "was once considered unnecessary."

"Nobody would consider transplanting an HIV-positive recipient because everyone knew their life span was short," he said, adding that "the notion that HIV-positive recipients could be transplanted arose as a result of their extended life spans."

Dr. Dorry Segev, associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, estimated the ban put 500-600 HIV-positive organs to waste each year, meaning the new policy has the potential to save thousands of lives.

"That'd be the greatest increase in organ transplantation that we've seen in the past decade," he said.

AIDS United president Michael Kaplan also noted another new perk of the policy: That HIV-positive people are now able to become organ donors.

"The idea that my organs could now benefit someone living with HIV?" he said. "Heck yeah."

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