It’s about time it came out, says scandal victim
AFORMER steel worker who received litres of contaminated blood giving him a life changing condition spoke out at a cross-party meeting a week after a inquiry into the nationwide scandal was launched.
Antoni Olszewski, from Skewen, was hit by a train while travelling home from work and in the following treatment he was given 36 units of contaminated blood giving him hepatitis C.
An inquiry into the contaminated blood scandal which left 2,400 people dead – including 70 in Wales – has been announced, although details of the UK-wide investigation are yet to be finalised.
The Welsh Assembly’s cross-party group on haemophilia and contaminated blood met outside the Senedd in Cardiff on Tuesday, a week after the inquiry was announced on July 11.
Dad-of-four Antoni Olszewski ,64, said: “I was coming home from work [in Port Talbot steel works] back in 1986 and I was crossing the railway as normal and I was run over by a train and it dragged me up the track.”
He was given the blood in the lifesaving surgery afterwards – but didn’t find out about the condition until 1998 when he went to give blood.
Mr Olszewski said that within three days of attempting to give blood doctors knocked on his door and told him he had chronic hepatitis C, a virus that can infect the liver.
Mr Olszewski said: “I have been ill. Very, very ill but I’ve fought it hard. I’ve had a good health service that have helped me all the way because they knew what they had done.
“Chronic hepatitis C normally attacks your liver but with me it attacked my immune system too similar to Aids.”
He added: “It’s about time it came out into the open. I had to walk around for all of these years with a timebomb.
“And mentally you don’t know when it’s going to go bang. It drove me nuts.”
At his lowest point Mr Olszewski said he thought about “packing it in”.
He said: “I got close, really down I don’t know how many times.”
Mr Olszewski has had the all clear but still has to go for regular blood tests.
Speaking at the event Julie Morgan, AM for Cardiff North who chairs the cross-party group and has campaigned on the issue for 20 years, said: “We’re here today because what happened with the contaminated blood scandal is one of the biggest tragedies that has ever happened in the NHS.
“In Wales 70 have died but hundreds have been personally affected by this scandal.
“Finally we have got a public inquiry. The important thing that we have to do now is to ensure that what people in Wales want is actually taken into account.
“I think we have got to shout as loud as we possibly can about this issue.
“We just need to have the answers. It’s taken so long because successive governments have taken so long to decide on an inquiry.”