A top federal health official is calling for improved testing and a more centralized system for tracking tissue and organ donations after a child treated at Boston Children’s Hospital got hepatitis C from a piece of a blood vessel transplanted in September from an infected donor.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday that two people in Kentucky who received kidneys from the same donor also were infected.
Dr. Matthew Kuehnert, director of the Office of Blood, Organ, and Other Tissue Safety at the CDC, tells The Boston Globe (http://bo.st/sbRN9q) the transmission in Massachusetts was traced to an error in tissue testing and delays in communication between the Kentucky transplant center and public health officials.
