Hospital's HIV sperm sample

Sixty couples have been contacted by Coventry's Walsgrave Hospital after a man who stored a sperm sample there was diagnosed HIV positive.

The hospital said the sample was being stored for the patient's own use and not for donation.

Richard Kennedy, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at Walsgrave Hospital, said that the chance of other samples being affected was negligible and the couples were being contacted as a matter of course.

"We called in the Department of Health and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and they confirmed our feelings that the risk was negligible", he said.

The sperm had been stored for several months and it was only when the patient returned to the hospital that staff were made aware of his illness.

Sealed containers

The sample was being stored in an individual, sealed container within a sealed liquid nitrogen tank.

The tank contained sperm from 60 other men, but because all of the samples were in individually sealed containers the risk of cross-contamination was "highly improbable".

Mr Kennedy added: "There has never ever been a case in the whole world that a specimen like this has contaminated another specimen."

He said that men did not have to undergo screening for HIV or other viruses under the guidelines in place at the time.

But he said all people depositing sperm have been screened for HIV and other diseases since May of this year.

A new national screening guideline is due to come into place in 2004.