LONDON, AUGUST 27: Blood contaminated with the HIV virus and hepatitis has been shipped to India and China, from South Africa, a country with among the highest incidence of AIDS, according to The Sunday Times online newspaper.Thousands of people in both countries are thought to have been in danger of contamination from this dangerous export.The 20-year-old multi-million dollar racket in which contaminated blood waspassed off as healthy has been exposed by a World Health Organisation (WHO)expert. Unscrupulous processing companies in several countries, acrossEurope and North America, relabelled the contaminated blood as fit for therapeutic use, then sold it on to India and China.The scandal first came to light when a British AIDS expert, Professor AlanSmith, alerted police of the trade in contaminated blood while he worked inthe virology department of the University of Natal in Durban. Following hiscomplaints, the South African Department of Health brought in WHO expert, DrWilbert Bannenberg, to investigate the issue. Dr Bannenberg uncovered atrail of the unethical trafficking that spanned North America and Europe before ending up in India and China.Dr Bannenberg's report estimates that in the past decade, the brokers mademore than $ 10 million from processing and re-labelling blood that isdonated free in South Africa as `a gift of life'. Bannenberg found a laxregime of permits for the import and export of blood products. He said thatthe current information on permits in South Africa was ``so vague thatauthorities were unable to determine the source or final destination of theproducts.'' Records of permits between 1997 and 1999 had also mysteriouslyvanished.Given the scale of South Africa's Aids problem - almost 3.5 million peopleare infected with AIDS - and the related fears about blood products from the country, large amounts of human plasma were classified as ``animal plasma'' for export. Dr Bannenberg found documents from 1995, now with Canadian police, which showed 15 shipments of ``animal plasma'' were flown to Belgium, where they were relabelled as human blood from Canada andsold on to a North American company's German plant for processing.According to The Sunday Times, following a tip-off in 1998, Austrianauthorities seized 4,000 litres of blood from a Linz-based company, AlbovinaAG. The blood was infected with hepatitis B and HIV. The Austrian investigation found that the blood had been shipped to Austria through Guernsey by a South African company. Several blood brokers are due to appear in court in Austria, facing charges of fraudulent trading and endangering public health.At least two British companies, one based in the tax haven, Guernsey and theother in Berkshire, have been investigated by Austrian detectives. Themanager of one of the British companies involved said it had stopped buyingblood from South Africa two years ago as rumours spread within the industry.He insisted that all the blood used in Britain had been sold on as ``control'' blood for laboratory testing.
