The nation's first transplants between a donor with HIV and recipients with HIV were performed by Johns Hopkins Medicine in March, just three years after a federal ban on such procedures was overturned,
The Baltimore Sun reported Wednesday.
According to National Public Radio, beginning in 1988, a law had made it illegal for people with HIV to donate organs when they died. After persistent lobbying by Johns Hopkins doctors on Capitol Hill, Johns Hopkins became the first U.S. hospital given approval for such transplants from the United Network for Organ Sharing, a nonprofit that manages organ transplants for the federal government.
Johns Hopkins Medicine said in a statement that the legislation, know as the HIV Organ Policy Equity Act of 2013, or HOPE Act, opened the door for the surgery to take place.
"This is an unbelievably exciting day for our hospital and our team, but more importantly for patients living with both HIV and end-stage organ disease," said Dr. Dorry Segev, a transplant surgeon with the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "For these individuals, this could mean a new chance at life."
"It occurred to us that there are thousands of patients with HIV in need of kidney transplants, liver transplants, who were waiting on waiting lists and suffered high risks of dying while waiting for these organs," Segev told National Public Radio.
"And at the same time, we were throwing away organs from donors infected with HIV just because they were infected with HIV. These were potentially perfectly good organs for these patients," Segev added.
Physicians told the Sun that via the recent procedure, one donor gave a liver to one recipient and a kidney to another.
Segev estimated that about 500 to 600 HIV-positive would-be organ donors die each year, and could save more than 1,000 HIV-positive people waiting for transplants.