Health Management Associates is a defunct Arkansas-based company involved in a blood-management scandal during the 1980s.

History

HMA was founded by Francis M. Henderson, a pediatrician from Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

HMA was contracted by the state of Arkansas to provide prison healthcare in the early to mid-1980s. This arrangement allowed HMA to collect blood from the prisoners at the Cummins Unit in Grady, Arkansas. HMA paid the prisoners seven dollars and sold it for fifty dollars at a profit, though some of it was proven to be infected with HIV and hepatitis C.

In 1982, Henderson contracted with a Canadian company named Continental Pharma Cryosan, Limited, which turned the blood into clotting factor and sold it to the Red Cross. In 1983, Canadian officials discovered the source of the blood, and canceled the contracts. Though HMA closed the Arkansas prisoner blood business continued -until 1994.

See also

  • Contaminated haemophilia blood products
  • Factor 8: The Arkansas Prison Blood Scandal
  • Royal Commission of Inquiry on the Blood System in Canada

References

  • Tainted Blood from Arkansas
  • Clinton Blood Scandal