‘The murderers who gave my little boy contaminated blood must face justice’
On the eve of a new inquiry into more than 2,500 deaths, a grieving mother tells Rosie Taylor of her anger at failures she says killed her son
The picture in a hospital promotional magazine shows a nine-year-old boy being given a treatment – one which would ultimately kill him. Now his bereaved mother is calling for justice over his death and the deaths of around 2,500 other Britons who were given contaminated blood products between 1970 and 1991.
As a haemophiliac whose blood would not clot properly on its own, Ian Mather needed treatment whenever he had a bump or scrape to help his blood clot and prevent internal bleeding. But the treatment used a blood product called cryoprecipitate which was laborious to administer through a transfusion in hospital and was often in short supply.
So when a new blood plasma treatment became available in the Seventies which worked more quickly and effectively and could be injected at home, his doctors were eager to treat him with it.
There was so much excitement around the revolutionary new product – based on the clotting protein Factor VIII – that Ian was chosen to be pictured as he received it for Birmingham Children’s Hospital’s in-house magazine.
The photo, taken in 1977, shows the young boy studiously watching the needle in his arm and a nurse using a syringe to inject the liquid. Both of them were completely unaware it may have been contaminated with deadly viruses.
Unbeknown to most medical staff at the time, some batches of Factor VIII – particularly those imported from the United States – were contaminated with HIV or Hepatitis C.
It has since emerged the blood products were made in huge batches using blood from up to 20,000 donors and included samples sold by prison inmates, drug addicts and prostitutes. Just one infected donation could contaminate a whole batch.
Ian contracted HIV from the treatment when he was nine years old, and Hepatitis C two years later. His life was tragically cut short by illness caused by the viruses and he died aged just 25.
Now Valerie Sanders, his mother, is speaking out for the first time in the run-up to the opening of an independent inquiry on Monday into how and why patients were given infected blood products, how long authorities knew about the problems and whether there was an institutional cover-up.
The inquiry will consider evidence that pharmaceutical companies, health chiefs and ministers knew about the risks but failed to warn patients.
The former NHS administrator, now 76, said: “When I look at the picture and see him sitting there with his arm outstretched, it breaks my heart.”
She added: “In my eyes, they murdered my son. They allowed him to be given this treatment knowing it could kill him. How could they do that to little boys and young men?
“My son was my everything, my best friend, and they took him from me. And in the 41 years since he was infected, no one has said sorry – that makes me really angry.” Ian and his mother were not told he was infected, or even that he had been tested for infection, for five years.
They only discovered he had HIV in 1982 when Miss Sanders demanded doctors tell her the truth after she watched a TV documentary about contaminated Factor VIII.
Although the diagnosis was then a death sentence, Ian was more concerned about his mother’s welfare than his own.
“He said to the doctor: ‘How dare you keep this from me for so long, I could have infected my mother by accident’,” Miss Sanders said. “That tells you everything about the kind of boy he was. Even when he was told he had HIV, he was more worried about me.”
It was another 12 years before Miss Sanders discovered Ian had also contracted hepatitis as a child, when a doctor dropped it into a conversation shortly before his death.
Despite his HIV diagnosis, Ian had a positive outlook and fulfilled his dreams of becoming a chef, buying a flat and moving in with his girlfriend. He was known as a charming young man who did his best to help others.
He kept his HIV diagnosis secret out of fear of discrimination and also tried
‘When I look at the picture and see him sitting there with his arm outstretched, it breaks my heart’
‘In the 41 years since he was infected, no one has said sorry – that makes me really angry’
to hide his haemophilia, especially when misguided rumours started to circulate in the mid-eighties that haemophiliacs were partly responsible for spreading the Aids virus.
His mother nursed him in the final six weeks of his life. She had to endure seeing her only son waste away from a healthy 10 stone to just four stone. Ian died in February 1994.
Miss Sanders, from Lichfield in the West Midlands, has lived alone ever since. She said the loss of her son has only become more acute as time has gone on.
She said: “Ian would have been 50 this year. Somehow I miss him even more now I’m getting older and I have problems with my own health.
“I see other young men coming to help out their mothers. They pull up in the street with their wives and families in the car. I can’t but think: that should’ve been Ian. He would have loved to have got married and become a father.”
She hopes the inquiry will finally uncover the truth about how boys like Ian came to be given infected blood products. And like many other bereaved relatives, she wants to see those responsible punished.
She added: “They could give me a million pounds but it won’t bring back my son. All I want is justice. If I went out and murdered someone, I would have to pay for it. I want them to be punished for what they did. It was cruel and wicked and it has caused so much sadness and grief.”
Des Collins, of Collins Solicitors which is representing Miss Sanders and around 800 others, said: “This scandal should never have happened in the first place and the circumstances in which it came about should have been examined a long time ago with mistakes admitted. The Government owes the victims, their families and the campaigners, answers.”
Over three days next week, Sir Brian Langstaff, the inquiry chairman, will hear statements from victims, their families and Department of Health and NHS representatives on what their priorities are for the inquiry and how it should proceed.
Campaigners have condemned earlier attempts to identify those responsible as a “whitewash”.
One such attempt was a privatelyfunded inquiry held by Lord Archer of Sandwell in 2007. Because it was not granted official status it had to rely on witnesses voluntarily giving evidence and supplying documents, and found only the US pharmaceutical companies could be blamed.
An inquiry held in Scotland by Lord Penrose was launched in 2008. After seven years and £13million of taxpayers’ money, it failed to hold anyone responsible.
After the preliminary hearings next week, the full inquiry will be held in spring next year on a date yet to be confirmed.