Tokyo - A Japanese court yesterday found a former Health Ministry official guilty of negligence in connection with a scandal that exposed thousands to HIV through tainted blood products. The court handed down a suspended sentence.
The high-profile scandal, which grabbed headlines in the mid-1990s, spread deep into the ministry and rocked the nation with allegations of a government cover-up and unethical links between big business and bureaucrats.
The Tokyo District Court sentenced Akihito Matsumura, who headed the Health Ministry's Biologics and Antibiotics Division from 1984 to 1986, to a year in prison, suspended for two years. He had been charged with professional negligence resulting in the deaths of patients given blood products tainted with the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS.