HHS Announces New Rule Expanding Access to Kidney and Liver Transplants for People With HIV

The HHS has announced a final rule that will “expand access to kidney and liver transplants for people with HIV by removing clinical research requirements for these transplants.”

The final rule “removes the clinical research and institutional review board (IRB) approval requirements for kidney and liver transplants between donors with HIV and recipients with HIV. This change is based on research demonstrating the safety and effectiveness of kidney and liver transplants between donors and recipients with HIV.”

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra says that this rule “removes unnecessary barriers to kidney and liver transplants, expanding the organ donor pool and improving outcomes for transplant recipients with HIV.”

The rule “builds on the Biden-Harris Administration's commitment to advancing health equity and reducing barriers to care for people with HIV. By increasing the pool of available organs and streamlining the transplantation process, this policy can save lives, reduce stigma and discrimination associated with HIV, and lower costs and wait times.” The expansion “was driven by a large body of evidence, much of which was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and HHS, including recent findings from an NIH-funded study demonstrating noninferiority of kidney transplants between donors and recipients with HIV compared to transplants from donors without HIV to recipients with HIV.”