With two kidney recipients having contracted a brain infection from the organ donor - a child at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson - the health officials are looking to re- assess their policies pertaining to donors suffering from certain neurological conditions. Thus far, the decision about the donors rests entirely with the individual transplant centers.

The recent kidney transplant case highlights a wrong diagnosis of the donor's illness. The child who donated the kidneys to two kidney patients had a history of seizures and a brain disorder, which, as per the doctors, was a not a contagious condition.

However, after the two kidney recipients became critically ill, reportedly within hours of each other, the medical center found that the real cause of the donor child's illness, and his subsequent death in November, was found to be a rare, usually terminal infection.

Post kidney transplant, both the two recipients showed changes in their mental status, seizures and fever. And, Dr. Shirley Schlessinger, the medical director for the Mississippi Organ Recovery Agency, said that despite being treated with "a boatload of drugs," their condition has not improved.

Dr. Michael Ison, chairman of an advisory committee for the US oragn-transplant coordinating organization, United Network for Organ Sharing, has said that the plight of the two kidney recipients underscores the lack of a national policy on whether people with poorly defined neurological disorders should be banned from being donors.