The three patients who received organ transplants from an HIV-infected woman at a Florence hospital are fully aware of the consequences but have a positive outlook, the doctor who performed the surgery said on Wednesday.
"We tend to reason like healthy people and see the tragic aspect of this incident. These patients have a positive approach: they understand that they'll have to cope with the situation but they are concentrating on the fact that they have a functioning organ and a quality of life they didn't have before," Franco Filipponi told a news conference.
The patients are also aware they will be monitored and that treatments contain the disease and give them a better life expectancy.
"In the meantime, they are weighing this against the fact that they won't have to go through dialysis treatments or fear the worst for progressive liver diseases."
Meanwhile, health officials tasked a group of international experts to monitor the three patients at Careggi University hospital.
The group includes Tony Fauci, director of US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Marylanda.
Doctor Fauci has been researching HIV/AIDS for over 30 year and has been working on a vaccine to prevent HIV infection. He has also been instrumental in developing strategies for the therapy and immune reconstitution of patients with HIV/AIDS.
Other international members of the team are Professor Paul Volberding, one of the world's foremost experts on HIV/AIDS and Jose' Miro', a consultant in infectious diseases who heads Spain's HIV programme.
The three Italian doctors appointed are Francesco Menichetti from Pisa, Francesco Leoncini of Careggi hospital and professor Paolo Grossi, an infectiologist with Italy's AIDS programme.
The dramatic mistake at the Careggi university hospital was announced on Tuesday, soon after doctors became aware that the result of an HIV test on the donor's blood had been incorrectly written on a key document.
Prosecutors in Florence who are investigating the incident said they were still collecting information and have not yet questioned the biologist who made the labelling error.
PATIENTS HAVE NOT FILED CHARGES.
Chief Prosecutor Ubaldo Nannucci said the patients had not filed charges against the hospital.
Usually, if charges are not brought within three months, the case will be shelved, judicial sources said.
Filipponi admitted on Tuesday that the probability of infection in the receivers of the organs was high.
Experts said it would take a year before tests could establish whether or not the three patients - whose identities are being kept secret - had contracted HIV as a result of the transplants.
The donor was a 41-year-old woman who died of a brain haemorrhage, apparently unaware that she had the AIDS virus.
The incident was a huge blow to the image of Tuscan medical care, which has in the past boasted about the efficiency of its transplant system. Tuscany handles more transplants a year than any other Italian region.
Regional and national officials tried to reassure Italians about the safety of transplant operations and public health services in general.
"In over 40 years the singular case in Florence is the first of its kind," said Health Undersecretary Antonio Gaglione. "I wouldn't talk about a crisis in health care but a fatal human error".
