Health bosses ignored fears over tainted blood scandal as early as 1974
HEALTH bosses ignored a warning that patients were falling ill after being given imported blood products as early as 1974, official documents reveal.
Doctors told officials that patients given certain blood products, including the tainted Factor VIII from the US, had contracted hepatitis.
But successive governments allowed FacVIII to be used for at least another 11 years, allowing the contaminated blood scandal to continue. One doctor even warned of a hepatitis ‘epidemic’ among those who received the US-imported blood.
Up to 7,500 patients in the UK are thought to have been infected with hepatitis and HIV during the 1970s and 1980s after being given tainted blood products or transfusions. Nearly 3,000 have since died and none of the survivors nor families of the dead has received compensation.
Tomorrow a public inquiry into the scandal will resume in London with more than 40 victims and relatives giving evidence.
The minutes from the 1974 meeting, held in Oxford by the Oxford Haemophilia Centre, were obtained via a Freedom of Information request by Jason Evans, whose father died after being infected with HIV and hepatitis C. They show that attendees included Sheila Waiter, a senior medical officer from the Department of Health, and Jean Grant from the NHS Blood Transfusion Service.
One doctor, identified as Dr Craske from Poole Hospital in Dorset, spoke of an ‘epidemic of hepatitis A and B’ in patients in Bournemouth. They all had the blood- clotting disorder haemophilia and all nine received ‘one particular batch of commercial Factor VIII’.
A second doctor, Dr Rizza, told the meeting that there had been 11 cases of hepatitis A in patients in Oxford.
Another doctor, Dr Rosemary Biggs, played down concerns however, saying she hoped Factor
‘Deeply upsetting’
tor VIII ‘ would not get an unnecessarily bad name’. Factor VIII products were finally withdrawn in 1985 and 1986.
But campaigner Mr Evans said: ‘The fact that there could be this idea to keep known hepatitis-infected Factor VIII in circulation, as early as 1974, will be deeply upsetting to victims and families.’
Des Collins, from Collins Solicitors which represents more than 1,000 victims and families, said: ‘ Nothing changed as a result of this meeting: even though the risks were well-known.’
A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘The infected blood scandal was a tragedy that should never have happened... We are committed to being open and transparent with the inquiry.’