Hepatitis C, the main cause of liver cancer, is a blood- borne virus that affects as many as 200 million people worldwide, mostly drug addicts, kidney dialysis patients, hemophiliacs and people transfused with blood before 1990.

Liver Transplants

The virus, which causes no symptoms in 80 percent of those infected, is responsible for two-thirds of all liver transplants, according to the World Health Organization.

Those with symptoms of disease usually complain of jaundice, fatigue, abdominal pain, loss of appetite and nausea, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. About 3.5 million people in Japan have at least one of the five viruses that cause hepatitis.

The government plans to spend 180 billion yen over seven years on programs to treat and prevent hepatitis infections, and to avoid complications such as cirrhosis and cancer. The proposal will be discussed in the parliamentary session starting Jan.
18.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda reiterated an apology to hepatitis C sufferers who were infected by tainted infusions and the government's negligence in preventing them.

Severe Side Effects

``I was really pleased to hear that Prime Minister Fukuda expressed the commitment to help all sufferers,'' said Michiko Yamaguchi, who was infected with hepatitis C from a blood infusion and has campaigned for compensation. Yamaguchi said she suffered ``severe side effects'' from her treatment and was forced to quit her teaching job.

The government's settlement proposal will be heard in the Osaka High Court on Feb. 7. Mitsubishi Tanabe, whose Green Cross unit was named in the suit, will share the settlement cost.

Plaintiffs seeking damages in a class action against the government and the Osaka-based drugmaker claimed that transfusions -- including a human-derived, blood-clotting product called fibrinogen -- made and sold between 1964 and 1994 risked causing hepatitis C, according to the plaintiffs' web site.

People who had lost blood or were at risk of hemorrhage during childbirth or surgery may have been treated with those products during the 30-year period and may have been infected with hepatitis C, it said. About 96 percent of the plaintiffs are women, according to lawyer Yamanishi.

Imported Blood

Green Cross may have imported blood plasma from South Korea, Canada and the U.S., Singapore and Switzerland, according to a
report submitted by the company to the health ministry in 2004. It's not known how the human-derived materials were combined
to make fibrinogen because records can't be found, the company said.

Scientists showed the potential risks of hepatitis infection from donated blood in the late 1970s, prompting the U.S. to take human-derived fibrinogen off the market, said Ryuhei Kawada, a member of Japan's upper house parliament.

Kawada, 32, who suffers from the inherited blood disorder hemophilia, contracted HIV and hepatitis C through infected donated blood products.

``Things may have been very different if Japan's health ministry had taken action in the late 1970s,'' Kawada told a press briefing at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo today. The ``government had ways to take action.''

The health ministry identified in 2004 the clinics and hospitals where potentially infected blood products were delivered, and has called for the public to be screened for transfusion-induced diseases.

In Japan, medical institutions are required by law to keep patients' medical treatment records for at least five years and results of diagnostic tests, such as X-rays, for at least two.

Our legal team has found that some historic records exist in 30 percent of clinics and hospitals,'' lawyer Yamanishi told the same briefing in Tokyo today. ``Many may have kept the records in storage, but have said they have been destroyed. We need to validate this,'' he said, adding that the government and Mitsubishi Tanabe should share in the cost of finding and retrieving them.