POLITICIANS, doctors and the NHS conducted a “subtle, pervasive and chilling” cover-up of the “worst ever” health scandal which saw more than 30,000 people infected with incurable blood diseases, a landmark inquiry has ruled.
They lied for years about the risks of taking blood from prisoners and drug addicts as patients were killed or struck down by HIV and hepatitis due to medical blunders.
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More than 3,000 people have died after being infected with HIV and hepatitis C in the 1970s and 1980s after receiving transfusions or blood products from the NHS.
This afternoon, Rishi Sunak will apologise to the thousands of victims of the scandal, which the Infected Blood Inquiry has found could and should have been avoided.
In a damning seven-volume investigation into what happened, Chair of the Inquiry Sir Brian Langstaff concludes that those in positions of power in Government and the health service deliberately misled the public.
As a result, “lives, dreams, friendships, families, and finances were destroyed”, he said.
Patients with blood disorders like haemophilia were given treatments made from the blood of prisoners and drug addicts for years after experts realised it was dangerous.
Convicts in the US were given cash to donate but had high rates of deadly hepatitis C and HIV, with just a fraction of a millilitre of blood enough to infect someone.
Gung-ho doctors in Britain brushed the risks under the carpet and did not tell patients about them, lied to them, or even injected them without telling them.
Many of the victims were children who later died of AIDS in their teens or young adulthood.
Hundreds of survivors have suffered with trauma for decades and turned to drink, drugs and even suicide attempts.
A 2,500-page final report into the disaster has found that the evidence that the truth of what happened was “concealed or suppressed” is “overwhelming”.
Condemning the indecision by successive leaders, Sir Brian said: “Whilst the Government deliberated, those infected with AIDS through transfusion were suffering and dying.”
There was a “defensive closing of ranks” in the NHS after it came to light that patients being treated for haemophilia and other disorders were actually being infected with HIV and hepatitis through transfusions from 1970 onwards.
The father of a boy who was infected with hepatitis C said: “The NHS should have been much more open about what was happening from the beginning.
“It felt like a closed shop right from the start, no one knew what was going on and there was no information out there.
“There was nobody willing to take any responsibility for what had happened and that’s not right.”
In a key finding, Sir Brian states that the delay in a Government response to what was happening only increased the suffering dealt to victims and their families.
A pervasive attitude of “doctor knows best” meant that the Department of Health repeatedly chose not to issue guidance to stop the unsafe use of infected blood.
There was a “slow and inadequate response to taking precautions” even when “the writing was on the wall”.
The Inquiry also found that the blood services themselves were “slow to react” to the threat of AIDS” and did “too little, too late”.
NHS blood scandal: The report’s key findings
IN a damning seven-volume report, Chair of the Infected Blood Inquiry Sir Brian Langstaff concluded that MPs, doctors and the NHS conducted a “chilling cover-up
Key failures highlighted in the report include:
- A failure to act over risks linked to contaminated blood – some of which were known before the NHS was established in 1948.
- The slowness of the response to the scandal; for instance, it was apparent by mid-1982 that there was a risk that the cause of Aids could be transmitted by blood and blood products but the government failed to take steps to reduce that risk.
- Tests on blood were not introduced as quickly as they could have been.
- Patients and the wider public were given false reassurances.
- There were delays informing people about their infections – sometimes for years – and they were told in “insensitive” and “inappropriate” ways.
- Patients were “cruelly” told repeatedly that they had received the best treatment available.
- People with bleeding disorders were treated without proper consent and research was carried out on them without their knowledge.
- Children with bleeding disorders who attended Treloar College, where pupils with haemophilia were treated at an on-site NHS centre, were treated as “objects for research”. The report said these children were given “multiple, riskier” treatments. Other children with bleeding disorders were also given treatment “unnecessarily”.
- Regulatory failures, including the licensing of dangerous products, and failure to remove them from the market when concerns were raised.
- Instead of ensuring a sufficient supply of UK-made treatments for haemophilia, the NHS continued to import the blood clotting blood plasma treatment Factor VIII from the US – where manufacturers paid high-risk donors, including prison inmates and drug users. The UK blood services continued to collect blood donations from prisons until 1984.
- In terms of blood transfusions, blood donors were not screened properly and there were delays in blood screening. Too many transfusions were given when they were not necessarily needed.
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Huge ‘sense of relief’ that victims finally heard
By Julia Atherley, Home Affairs Correspondent
THE survivors and families of victims of the contaminated blood scandal have fought for decades for justice.
When Sir Brian Langstaff took to the stage at the Inquiry this afternoon the atmosphere was charged with a sense of relief that they had finally been listened to.
Filling Westminster Central Hall, the audience applauded the Inquiry Chair before he urged them to stop and said: “You are actually applauding the wrong people.
“The words come from you, and your stories.
“I want you please in a moment to give me an applause, a longer one if you will, to those who are really responsible for those that in this report.
“Look to the right, look to your left look in front.
“Those of you who can, turn and look behind you. Those are the people who have written this report.”
Flooding out of the hall after the landmark report was published, campaigners hugged each other and clung to pictures of their loved ones who died after being treated with infected blood.
After years of calling for a public inquiry into how the victims were treated they finally had their answers.
They spoke of feeling vindicated after the report concluded that the NHS and the Government conducted a “chilling” cover-up for decades thousands suffered.
Government fear of setting a precedent for compensation schemes “outweighed considerations of moral responsibility or compassion”, the Inquiry found.
Officials had decided at the outset not to provide compensation to victims of the scandal with thousands of people dying without receiving a penny.
There was a cover-up of what had happened to thousands of men, women and children “not in the sense of a handful of people plotting in an orchestrated conspiracy to mislead”, but in a “subtle, more pervasive and more chilling” way.
The report states: “In this way there has been a hiding of much of the truth.
“The people most directly affected said there was more to what happened than was in the public domain and they were correct.
“And yet it has taken decades to get an authoritative account of what happened to cause so many deaths, prolonged and wasting illnesses, and infections: and it is still not a full account since so many key witnesses have died and documents have been lost.”
Lives, dreams, friendships, families, and finances were destroyed. This disaster was not an accident
Sir Brian Langstaff
It continues: “A lack of openness, a lack of inquiry, a lack of accountability and elements of downright deception have led to a lack of trust in those responsible for the treatment – that is, their treatment both medically and as citizens of a democratic state – and this has in turn done further damage to them.”
In the 1980s and 1990s, politicians consistently insisted that the best treatment had been given to patients given the medical expertise that was held at the time.
Sir Brian concludes that this assertion was “wrong” and led to a “blindness” by politicians to what had actually happened.
Criticising the “litany of failures”, he wrote: “It was a statement of perfection – asserting that there was nothing better that could have been done.
“The use of such a statement should always be approached with considerable caution.
“There was no recognition of anything that might balance the absolutist claim that the treatment was simply the best.”
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In November 1989, at a meeting at Downing Street, then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had stated that “the position was” that people infected with HIV from blood products “had been given the best treatment available on the then current medical advice, and without it many of the haemophiliacs would have died.”
This is the line which was taken when resisting calls for compensation to be paid to the victims of the treatment scandal.
The “best available treatment” line did not change when Tony Blair’s Labour Government came to power in 1997 – and continued to be used until 2009.
The Inquiry has also found that documents which should have been “accessible and recoverable” were deliberately destroyed by Government departments.
Three sets of documents are missing – either having been lost or destroyed – in “a deliberate attempt to make the truth more difficult to reveal”.
Sir Brian, who received a standing ovation and rounds of applause as he addressed victims and grieving relatives, said: “In families across the UK, people were treated by the NHS and over 30,000 were given infections which were life shattering.
“3,000 people have already died and that number is climbing week by week. Lives, dreams, friendships, families, finances were destroyed.
“This disaster was not an accident. The infections happened because those in authority – doctors, the blood services and successive governments – did not put patient safety first.
“The response of those in authority served to compound people’s suffering.
“The government is right to accept that compensation must be paid.
“Now is the time for national recognition of this disaster and for proper compensation to all who have been wronged.”
‘Shocking lack of compassion and humanity’
Victims of the scandal, who are expected to receive compensation up to £10billion, said they felt “validated and vindicated” by the final report.
Andy Evans, chairman of the Tainted Blood campaign group, told a press conference that it was a “momentous day”.
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“Sometimes we felt like we were shouting into the wind during the last 40 years, but today proves that it can happen in the UK and I just feel validated and vindicated by Sir Brian and his report,” he said.
“We have been gaslight for generations. This report today brings an end to that and it looks to the future and says that this cannot continue, this ethos of denial and cover-up.
“The duty of care for candour has to be reviewed going forward so this cannot happen again.”
Jackie Britton, from Bloodloss Families, added: “Our truth has been told, it’s in black and white and they’ve got no place to hide.”
Responding to the findings, Kate Burt, chief executive of the Haemophilia Society, said: “This report vindicates the long-held beliefs of survivors that the government hid the truth to protect itself and to save money.
“The tragic truth is that many of the infections could and should have been prevented.
“The state and NHS bodies failed to protect peoples’ lives. A generation of people with haemophilia and other bleeding disorders were decimated by the infections they received through contaminated blood products.
“Patients were treated without their consent; that was unethical and wrong.
“The report highlights a shocking lack of compassion and humanity which should shame government, civil servants and the NHS.”
The scale of human suffering unleashed by this scandal, and deepened by decades of government denial and inaction, is a national disgrace
Kate Burt
She added: “People with haemophilia and their families received terrifying terminal diagnoses without support, without hope.
“For decades, they and their families have endured prejudice, discrimination and cruelty as they faced what they believed was certain death from HIV and hepatitis C contracted through their NHS treatment.
“The scale of human suffering unleashed by this scandal, and deepened by decades of government denial and inaction, is a national disgrace.”
Clive Smith, chairman of the Haemophilia Society, said that while no single person is responsible for the scandal, many politicians “should hang their heads in shame”.
“This is the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS,” he added.
“This was systemic. It’s been the result of generations of denial, delay and cover-up.”
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Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey urged all parties to “sincerely apologise” to those whose lives have been “torn apart”.
He said: “Thousands of people have died waiting for justice.
“This landmark report must finally lead to justice for all those impacted. It is critical that the Government compensates the victims and their families of this terrible scandal as quickly as possible.”
Scotland’s public health minister Jenni Minto echoed his words, adding: “On behalf of the Scottish Government, I reiterate our sincere apology to those who have been infected or affected by NHS blood or blood products.
“The Scottish Government has already accepted the moral case for compensation for infected blood victims and is committed to working with the UK Government to ensure any compensation scheme works as well as possible for victims.”
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The infected blood scandal in numbers
IT’S thought that tens of thousands of people in the UK were infected with contaminated blood between the 1970s and early 1990s.
Statisticians advising the Infected Blood Inquiry have come up with a number of different figures about how many people have been infected, but they have stressed there is “considerable uncertainty about the conclusions”.
Commentators have suggested that the figures – particularly those around hepatitis C infections – should be seen as a “starting point”.
According to the inquiry’s Statistics Expert Group:
- Around 1,250 people with bleeding disorders such as haemophilia were infected with HIV through infected blood products.
- Some 80 to 100 people were infected with HIV as a result of a blood transfusion – which could have been given following an accident, during surgery, during childbirth or another medical procedure.
- Between 3,650 and 6,250 people with bleeding disorders were infected with hepatitis C – this includes 1,250 people who were infected with both HIV and hepatitis C.
- Some 26,800 people were infected with hepatitis C as a result of having a blood transfusion – though statisticians said this number could vary anywhere between 21,300 and 38,800 people.
- Some 22,000 of these were deemed to be chronically infected as they survived more than six months after their transfusion.
- Among people who received hepatitis C as a result of a blood transfusion, 64 per cent were women.
- Of the 26,800 hepatitis C infections which occurred as a result of a blood transfusion, 22,000 were among patients in England, 2,740 occurred in Scotland, 1,320 in Wales, and 730 patients were infected in Northern Ireland.
- Five people were infected with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, causing brain damage. They all died.
- The figures do not include people who were “indirectly infected” – such as a partner who caught HIV from a loved one who had been given contaminated blood or a blood product.
- Statisticians said that it is not possible to estimate the numbers of hepatitis B virus infections with “reasonable accuracy”.
It’s been estimated that 3,000 people have died as a result of the infections, while others live with ongoing side effects of infection.
Source: PA