Tuesday, 8 July 2025, 11:42
After almost 40 years, the ban on donor transplants from HIV-positive people in Spain has been lifted. The new regulation will allow donations from living or deceased patients to other people infected with the virus. The official state gazette (BOE) has published the law change, which establishes that this practice can be safely applied to fight the effects of the infection. With this, the Ministry of Health abolishes the 1987 ban.
In addition to increasing the availability of organs, health minister Mónica García said that this initiative is “aimed at eliminating the social stigma attached to people with HIV”.
According to the Ministry of Health, if the veto on organ donation from HIV-positive patients had not existed in the last decade, up to 165 transplants could have been carried out with organs and tissues donated by the 65 people with HIV who died without being given the chance to support this act of altruism. Every year, some 50 HIV-positive patients are on the waiting list for organ transplants in Spain. Until now, they could only receive organs and tissues from non-infected people.
Transplants for HIV-positive patients have been performed in Spain since the first decade of this century, thanks to new treatments that have made it possible to control and manage the disease. Today, transplants of all types of organs are performed on HIV-infected patients. By December 2024, 311 kidney transplants, 510 liver transplants, 11 lung transplants, 10 heart transplants and one pancreas-kidney transplant had been recorded in Spain, demonstrating good results in the long term.
Over the years, HIV patients who have received a transplant have experienced favourable recovery thanks to new antiretroviral treatments, which do not interact with the immunosuppressive therapy needed to prevent organ rejection, and to the change in the natural history of hepatitis C virus co-infection brought about by the use of direct-acting antivirals.
A safe practice
Organ transplantation among people with HIV is now also a safe practice. Evidence from studies in recent years shows that HIV-infected transplant patients experience similar results with organs from HIV-positive or negative donors, leading to the authorisation of these interventions in the US in 2024.
With the repeal of the 1987 law, it will now be possible to carry out this type of intervention in Spain, “responding to a historical demand of the HIV-infected community and the professionals who provide them with healthcare so that these people can become organ donors, if they wish”.