A Lake County judge on Friday awarded two year jail term to an East Chicago man for concealing that he was HIV-positive when he donated blood to a Hammond plasma center, a Class C felony that carries a sentence of two to eight years.
Pro-Tem Lake County Criminal Court Judge Robert Lewis on Friday ordered the culprit, Michael Ivy to serve one year on probation, besides two years in prison, in turn of his gruesome offense that could have put several lives in danger.
The forty six-year-old man of the 3900 block of Pulaski Street in East Chicago pleaded guilty last month to donating or selling blood contaminated with the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV on Sept. 13 to Bio-Blood Component Inc., 5550 Sohl Ave., Hammond.
Ivy admitted he was diagnosed with HIV in August 2002, and was well informed by a doctor at St. Catherine Hospital in East Chicago that he could never again donate blood, plasma, organs or other body tissues.
Even then, in September last, while donating blood products to Bio-Blood, Ivy checked the “no” box on a questionnaire that asked if he was HIV positive. Ivy checked in the Bio-Blood Components in Hammond and said he was a new donor.
He gave blood thrice on Sept. 13, Sept. 15 and Sept. 20, before Bio-Blood tested a specimen and found it HIV positive. Ivy returned to the business on Sept. 22 to donate blood again but was refused.
Court records did not indicate whether Ivy received payment for donated blood.
The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) by infecting helper T cells of the immune system.
According to the fact sheet prepared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), HIV spreads by sexual contact with an infected person, by sharing needles and/or syringes (primarily for drug injection) with someone who is infected, or, less commonly (and now very rarely in countries where blood is screened for HIV antibodies), through transfusions of infected blood or blood clotting factors.
The State law mandates that all blood banks destroy the blood infected with the deadly virus.
Recognized in 1981, AIDS has now become a major worldwide pandemic. The HIV/AIDS epidemics spreading through the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa are highly varied.
Although it is not correct to speak of a single African epidemic, Africa is without doubt the region most affected by the virus. Inhabited by just over 12% of the world's population, Africa is estimated to have more than 60% of the AIDS-infected population.
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