Yale New Haven Hospital will perform HIV-positive organ transplants

Another U.S. hospital (and the first in the New England region) will be allowed to perform organ transplants on HIV-positive patients, according to the Yale Daily News.

The United Network for Organ sharing granted Yale New Haven Hospital the distinction as the sixth hospital to allow HIV-positive organ donation Sept. 14. It will allow the hospital to provide new organs to HIV-positive patients from HIV-positive donors.

According to the Daily News, the certification came after the hospital was involved the world’s first HIV-to-HIV liver transplant in the world and the first HIV-to-HIV kidney transplant in the country earlier this year.

HIV-positive patients will be included on the hospital’s Paired Kidney Exchange Program to help match patients with kidneys faster.

“Not only does that mean that individuals get access to organs by increasing the overall pool of organs, but others have shorter waiting time,” Yale New Haven Hospital Paired Kidney Exchange Program Director Peter Yoo told the Daily News.

Ideally, that ability to pair certain organ recipients with tailor-matched donors frees up other, less well-matched organs to go to other patients. For example, now the about 200 HIV-positive people who might need an organ in the U.S. in a given year can receive them from other HIV-positive donors instead of HIV-negative donors, allowing 200 more HIV-negative recipients to receive those extra HIV-negative organs.

The program could mean saved lives for both HIV-positive and HIV-negative patients waiting for organ transplants.

The approval for this program was made possible after the 2013 HIV Organ Policy Equity Act, which allowed HIV-positive people to donate organs.

Check out the Yale Daily News to see more about why some policy makers, scientists and patients were first hesitant about such a practice and how that thinking changed.