12 patients in Wales treated with stolen body parts

12 patients in Wales treated with stolen body parts

Efforts were last night under way to contact and reassure 12 people who were treated in Wales using body parts stolen from a New York funeral parlour. Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust has identified a dozen patients who were treated with bone grafts bought from US-firm Biomedical Tissue Services, which is at the centre of a body part stealing scandal in the US.

The patients had been treated at the University Hospital of Wales, in Cardiff, and Llandough Hospital in the Vale of Glamorgan. A further three patients from the private Bupa Hospital, in Cardiff, received bone grafts from the same source.

The three Welsh hospitals are among 25 in England and Wales to be named by government healthcare watchdogs as receiving possibly contaminated human body parts stolen in America. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) made the information public after a Freedom of Information request by the BBC. A spokeswoman said, "We conducted our own internal review and concluded that any danger of the identity of recipients being discoverable was slight, and that there was a public interest in releasing the information."

Welsh patients treated with stolen body parts (icWales, 22 September 2006)