In May 2005, a young mother in the central Russian region of Voronezh was contaminated with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
The director was shot at twice outside his office at about 2 p.m. (10 a.m. GMT) today. He was not injured.
The City Prosecutor's Office said it has opened a criminal case on attempted murder charges.
The Voronezh blood bank was stripped of its license in December 2005.
The governor of the Voronezh region said at the time that a lack of modern equipment was to blame for the contamination.
Vladimir Kulakov said the bank's blood-testing equipment was too outdated to detect in time the virus in the donor blood given to the 21-year-old woman shortly after she gave birth at a local maternity hospital.
He said equipping medical institutions across Russia with advanced technology and equipment was vital to containing the spread of HIV/AIDS.
According to the Federal Service for the Oversight of Consumer Protection and Welfare, HIV infection has been spreading unevenly in the Russian Federation, with about 60% of all registered HIV cases concentrated in 10 Russian regions.
The service said the regions with the largest number of HIV cases include St. Petersburg and its suburbs, Moscow and the Moscow Region, the Urals region of Sverdlovsk, the Siberian regions of Irkutsk, Chelyabinsk and Khanty-Mansi, and the Samara Region on the Volga River, all major financial centers or resource-rich areas.
The watchdog said 15,997 new HIV cases were registered in the country in the first half of 2006, representing an 18% decline on the same period last year.
As of August 16, 2006, a total of 348,787 cases of HIV were reported in the country, including 925 children who contracted the virus from their mothers.
However, independent experts have suggested that over a million Russians, or roughly 1% of the country's population, are infected.
About 15,000 children born to HIV-positive mothers have not been diagnosed with the virus, but are under medical supervision.
The service said HIV is a relatively new disease in Russia.
