A group of 19 AIDS patients in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province will receive $ 1.2 million as compensation from a hospital that infected them with HIV.

The group had initially sought $ 3.75 million, but then settled for $ 1.2 million, their lawyer said.

This case involves the largest single group of patients in China to be infected with HIV at the hospital, following the transfusion of contaminated blood. They have all since developed AIDS.

The hospital will provide the 18 living victims with a lump sum payment of $ 25,500 plus $ 382 per month, Zhou Bin, a lawyer based in north China's Shanxi Province who had volunteered to help the AIDS patients recover compensation from the hospital, said.

The hospital will also cover the victims' medical fees for the rest of their lives.

The family members of a victim who has succumbed to AIDS, surnamed Yang, will receive over $ 37,000 from the hospital. Fifteen patients contracted the fatal HIV, which causes AIDS, after being treated at the hospital associated with the Heilongjiang Construction Farm in 2004.

They all received blood transfusions from illegal blood sellers operating within the hospital. The blood had not been tested for the deadly virus. Three of the 15 patients passed the virus on to their spouses and a mother infected her five-year-old child, bringing to 19 the total number of victims.

Three staff members of the hospital were sentenced last June to two, five and 10 years in jail, respectively, for illegally collecting and supplying blood.

A man surnamed Sun and his wife were the sources of the HIV-contaminated blood in all the above cases. The couple had made a living selling blood to the Bei'an hospital and died before Yang.

Sources familiar with the case said the 19 AIDS patients have been living in poverty since they developed the illness.

This was not the first case of people being infected with HIV after receiving a blood transfusion at a hospital.

In Tongshan County in East China's Jiangsu Province, more than 30 local farmers have been infected with HIV in the past decade after accepting illegal blood transfusions.

The health ministry reported last week that the number of people officially reported infected with HIV in China had risen 27.5 per cent since the beginning of the year, to more than 180,000 at the end of October.

Experts estimate that the actual number of people infected with HIV in China is 650,000 including 75,000 who have developed AIDS.