Seventy-four people have been infected with HIV/AIDS through contaminated blood transfusions more than a decade ago at a hospital in central China's Hubei Province, a local health official revealed Friday.

Li Songquan, director of the health bureau in Daye City, told Xinhua that the Daye No. 2 hospital found in 2003 that one HIV carrier had once sold it blood.

The hospital then tracked the blood sellers and receivers before 1998 and found more than 20 sellers and 73 receivers were infected with the deadly virus, Li said.

The Blood Donation Law, effective in October 1998, banned blood selling and ordered HIV testing of all blood supplies.

A patient surnamed Zhu was tested HIV positive at the end of last year, raising the number of infections through blood transfusions to 74, Li said in an interview.

Zhu had agreed to compensation of 100,000 yuan (14,644 U.S. dollars) and free medical treatment provided by the local government and hospital, Li said.

Most of the 74 patients were farmers from Jinniu town and Daye's neighboring regions of Jiangxia and Ezhou.

"There have been no reports of further cross-infection," Li said.

On Wednesday, the Wuhan Morning Post newspaper, reported that more than 80 hospital patients had been infected with HIV through contaminated blood transfusions at the hospital. The patients then cross-infected about 20 family members.

The Day city government has offered 20 million yuan to treat and compensate the victims.

In 1990s, villagers in Jinniu town in Daye were infected with HIV when selling blood in other regions. Unaware, they continued selling the contaminated blood after returning home.

Illegal blood selling were also blamed for the HIV infections of many farmers in Hubei's neighboring province of Henan in the mid 1990s.

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