More than a year after a child received a liver in what is believed to be the world's first international liver transplant from a mother living with HIV to her HIV-negative child, both mother and child have fully recovered, though the child's HIV status is still unknown. 

This was announced at the Wits University Donald Gordon Medical Centre in Parktown, Johannesburg. 

"In the weeks after the transplant, we thought that the child was HIV-positive, because we detected HIV antibodies," said professor Jean Botha. 

However, HIV experts that were brought in from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases could not find any active HIV infection in the bloodstream of the child. 

This success means that people living with controlled HIV may be a new group of potential donors greatly needed to relieve the transplant crisis in the country.