The case raises concerns about the safety of China's blood supply.

Chinese authorities say the blood supply in major cities is safe and have ordered all hospitals to use blood from government-run blood banks.

In what is believed to be the first such case in Beijing, the boy's father Sun Ya is demanding more than 860,000 yuan (104,000 US dollars) in compensation for medical fees and psychological damages, the China Daily said.

The Beijing Haidian District People's Court has accepted the lawsuit and a court session is scheduled to open in about a month, the report quoted sources as saying.

The Stomatological Hospital, affiliated with Peking University, denied the transfusion infected the boy with HIV, saying blood used was provided by a legal blood center in Beijing.

The director of the hospital's medical affairs department, who gave her surname as Shen, said the boy had also been operated on at Henan hospitals, making it difficult to tell where he was infected, the report said.

The boy, whose name was not revealed, tested positive for HIV after suffering from a serious case of pneumonia last November in central Henan province, where he and his family live, his father claims.

Both the boy's parents tested negative for the virus.

Sun and his wife concluded the blood transfusion -- in August 2002 -- was the one likely source.

Doctors in Henan told Sun to take his son to the Beijing hospital for the operation because it provides better medical treatment.

Experts were quoted as saying it was up to the hospital to prove no tainted blood came from them.

Lawsuits over HIV-tainted blood have surfaced in recent years throughout China. In several cases, patients infected with HIV through transfusion or their relatives have won compensation.

International organizations, including the United Nations, believe China's official figure for the number of HIV infections -- 840,000 -- is far too low, suggesting it is more than one million and could rise to 20 million by 2010.

Officials have said infection through blood transfusions has been basically curbed after the government invested in cleaning up the blood supply.

But in some rural areas, irresponsible or ill-informed doctors reportedly still use unchecked blood they buy from farmers for transfusions rather than blood from blood banks, which costs more.

TERRA.WIRE