NYC Hospital Performs First-Ever HIV-Positive Heart Transplant

HI INDIA NEWS DESK
NEW YORK, NY — A New York City hospital performed the world’s first heart transplant between two HIV-positive people, the organization announced in a news release.

The procedure was done at Montefiore Health System in the Bronx. Hospital officials said that the recipient of the donor’s heart, a woman in her 60s, suffered from advanced heart failure and underwent a heart and kidney transplant.

In 2013, the HIV Organ Policy Equity Act allowed people living with HIV to donate their organs to an HIV-positive recipient. Montefiore is one of only 25 centers in the United States eligible to offer such a surgery, officials said.

“Thanks to significant medical advances, people living with HIV are able to control the disease so well that they can now save the lives of other people living with this condition. This surgery is a milestone in the history of organ donation and offers new hope to people who once had nowhere to turn,” Dr. Ulrich Jorde said in the release.

According to Montefiore, 60,000 to 100,000 people in the United States could benefit from a new heart. Despite the need, approximately 3,800 transplants were performed in 2021.