The Infected Blood Inquiry said its victims had been failed “not once but repeatedly” by their doctors, by bodies including the NHS and others responsible for their safety, and the government.
It criticised the failure to make patient safety paramount in decision-making, pointing out the risk of viral infections being transmitted in blood and blood products had been known about since the start of the NHS in 1948.
But it said despite this people were exposed to “unacceptable risks”.
This included:
Not doing enough to stop importing blood products from abroad – which included blood from high-risk donors in the US where prisoners and drug addicts were paid to give blood
Continuing to source blood donations from high-risk populations in the UK too such as prisoners until 1986
Taking until the end of 1985 to heat-treat blood products to eliminate HIV despite the risks being known since 1982
Not introducing as much testing as could have been done to reduce the risk of hepatitis from the 1970s onwards
Reporting from Nick Triggle, Health Correspondent, BBC News at 12:30 hours
The inquiry was specifically asked to explore whether there was any evidence of a cover-up.
Inquiry chair Sir Brian Langstaff is clear – there is, although he prefers the term “hiding the truth”.
He says there was a lack of openness, inquiry, accountability and elements of “downright deception”, including destroying documents.
But he said hiding the truth included not only deliberate concealment, but also telling half-truths or not telling people what they had a right to know.
He said this included the risks of treatment they received, what alternatives were available and, at times, even the fact that they were infected.
Reporting by Nick Triggle, Health Correspondent, BBC News at 12:30 hours
It has been described as the worst treatment disaster in the 75-year history of the UK’s NHS.
More than 30,000 people were infected with HIV and hepatitis C in the 1970s and 80s after being given contaminated blood products harvested from US prisoners.
An estimated 2900 patients died as a result.
The scandal centres on the fact that government officials had been warned at the time that the blood plasma had been harvested from inmates held in US prisons.
They included the Cummins State Farm prison in Arkansas where inmates were paid between $US5 ($7.60) and $US7 ($10.70) each time for blood plasma which was then sold for about $US100 ($152) into the drug industry supply chain.
But the approach used meant that a single batch used for patients could contain plasma harvested from 20,000 donors, obviously drastically increasing the risk of infection with bloodborne viruses.
The drug firm Bayer has already provided 7000 documents to a UK inquiry due to release its final report next month.
They show that its subsidiary, Cutter Laboratories, had warned licensing authorities back in the 1970s that its blood product Koate could contain viruses.
It said: “Since the presence or absence of hepatitis virus in Koate concentrate cannot be proven with absolute certainty the presence of such a virus should be assumed.”
Two patient groups in the UK became the unwitting victims of the scandal.
The first was haemophiliacs infected after treatments made from donated plasma were developed in the 1970s to replace the missing clotting agent Factor VIII.
The UK inquiry has been told that some 1250 patients were infected with both HIV and hepatitis C as a result, including 380 children.
Around two-thirds subsequently died of an AIDS-related illness.
A further 2400-5000 patients developed hepatitis C on its own.
The second patient cohort was those given blood transfusions after childbirth, surgery or other medical treatment.
It has been estimated that between 1970 and 1991 between 80 and 100 patients were infected with HIV, and some 27,000 with hepatitis C.
By the mid-1970s warnings were being repeatedly made that Factor VIII imported from the US carried a greater risk of viral infection.
But with attempts to make the UK more self-sufficient in blood products failing, the trade continued, even though campaigners say haemophiliacs could have been offered an alternative treatment called Cryoprecipitate.
According to the BBC, at the time this was deemed less effective and harder to administer even if it was made from the blood plasma of a single donor, lowering the infection risks.
Part of the issue was ignorance.
Even as late as November 1983, the government was insisting there was no “conclusive proof” that HIV could be transmitted in blood.
The inquiry heard testimony from many of those infected including former pupils at Treloar’s, a specialist boarding school in the UK where dozens of young haemophiliacs were infected with HIV.
In the US, companies who supplied infected products have paid out millions of dollars in out-of-court settlements.
Politicians and drug companies have been convicted of negligence in other countries, including France and Japan.
MEAG COMMENT: But not in Australia, they all got away with it, so far. We always believed that Australia’s contaminated blood scandal was three times worse than the UK. So what is the true number in Australia then? Mammoth. God help those patients for the Australian Government didn’t and still hasn’t.
LONDON — Australian journalist and esteemed investigative journalist John Pilger has died in London, on 30 December 2023, aged 84. The world has lost a dissenting voice.
His numerous books and especially his documentaries opened the world’s eyes to the failings, and worse, of governments in many countries – including here, his birthplace Australia.
Thank you for exposing what governments hid. Thank you for listening. The MEAG salutes you.
EXCESS DEATHS CONCEALED BY EXCESS DECEPTION — nothing new here!
COVID policy makers are determined to remain silent in the face of unassailable evidence that their totalitarian actions were devastating – both individually and nationally.
The shutting down of societies, the useless mask mandates, the vaccine lies and the crushing of individual rights have been exposed, ad infinitum.
Australia’s heroic COVID five senators – Alex Antic, Gerard Rennick, Malcolm Roberts, Matt Canavan and Ralph Babet – refuse to lie down on the issue.
One of the principal supporting claims of the truth-tellers has been “excess deaths”. That is the astonishing coincidence of a sharp increase in “all-cause deaths” that has occurred precisely from the time of the mass vaccine rollout.
SYDNEY — Four Sydney doctors from St George Hospital referred to Medical Board over hospital death.
Adam FITZPATRICK died in August 2020. He died at St George Hospital, Kogarah, following a motor vehicle crash. His death was preventable. It’s currently before the Coroner’s Court.
The clinicians are: Dr Paras JAIN, Dr Ajey DIXIT, Dr Hermang DOSHI (all males), and Dr Ashima SHARMA (female).
The HCCC, of course, dismissed the complaint. There is no point to the HCCC for its uselessness.
The same, very much the same, catalogue of errors we hear about week in, week out. The lack of care, lack of concentration, lack of listening, lack of paying attention …on and on the same mistakes keep on happening, and patients keep on dying unnecessarily. Who is going to remedy this ongoing malpractice?
Hospital bosses failed to investigate allegations against Lucy LETBY and tried to silence doctors, the lead consultant at the neonatal unit where she worked has told the BBC.
The hospital also delayed calling the police despite months of warnings that the nurse may have been killing babies.
The unit’s lead consultant Dr Stephen Brearey first raised concerns about Letby in October 2015.
No action was taken and she went on to attack five more babies, killing two.
Letby has been found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder six others in a neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital, in Cheshire.
The first five murders all happened between June and October 2015 and – despite months of warnings – the final two were in June 2016.
BBC Panorama and BBC News have been investigating how Letby was able to murder and harm so many babies for so long.
Nurse Lucy LETBY has been found guilty of murdering seven babies on a neonatal unit, making her the UK’s most prolific child serial killer in modern times.
The 33-year-old has also been convicted of trying to kill six other infants at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016.
Letby deliberately injected babies with air, force fed others milk and poisoned two of the infants with insulin.
She refused to appear in the dock for the latest verdicts.
They have been delivered by the jury over several hearings but they were not reportable until jurors were discharged.
Letby broke down in tears as the first set of guilty verdicts were read out by the jury’s foreman on 8 August after 76 hours of deliberations.
During the trial, which started in October 2022, the prosecution labelled Letby as a “calculating and devious” opportunist who “gaslighted” colleagues to cover her “murderous assaults”.
She was convicted following a two-year investigation by Cheshire Police into the alarming and unexplained rise in deaths and near-fatal collapses of premature babies at the hospital.
Before June 2015, there were fewer than three baby deaths per year on the neonatal unit.
