A gift of life from one HIV patient to another

Organ transplants between HIV-positive donors and HIV-positive recipients have given patients living with both HIV and end-stage organ disease, a new chance at life. Photo: Reuters

In a first that gives HIV-positive patients yet another chance for long lives, surgeons at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center in the United States have transplanted a kidney and a liver from a deceased donor who was positive for HIV into two HIV-positive recipients.

The groundbreaking transplant surgeries using organs from an HIV-positive donor ends a 25-year stretch during which the organs of HIV-positive people willing to donate them were rejected for use in transplants.