Chile’s health minister quits over AIDS scandal

updated 5:07 p.m. ET Oct. 28, 2008

SANTIAGO, Chile - Chile’s Health Minister is resigning amid an uproar over the government’s failure to notify people who had tested positive for AIDS.

Presidential spokesman Francisco Vidal said Tuesday President Michelle Bachelet accepted the resignation of Soledad Barria.

A television station reported this month that officials at a hospital in the northern city of Iquique failed to track down and inform patients who had tested positive for AIDS. Two of the patients died.

Opposition legislators had been threatening to impeach Barria.

Barria is a member of Bachelet’s Socialist Party and a close friend of the president.

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