Orphaned by blood scandal
Aged 9, Lauren’s mother and father died of HIV within 8 days of each other
‘It destroyed my family’
OVER the course of eight days, Lauren Palmer’s life was torn apart.
Aged just nine, she watched her father and then her mother die with HIV.
Tragically, it was completely avoidable as her father, Stephen, was one of 2,000 innocent victims of the NHS tainted blood scandal.
Mr Palmer, a haemophiliac, was infected with HIV and hepatitis C during a transfusion and unknowingly passed it on to his wife, Barbara.
Miss Palmer, now 33, has backed the Daily Mail’s calls for a public inquiry.
An estimated 7,500 patients contracted hepatitis and HIV after they received contaminated blood clotting agents in the 1970s and 1980s.
In Scotland, 3,000 people – including children – were infected with hepatitis C while 78 contracted HIV.
The Penrose Inquiry, set up by the Scottish Government, concluded in 2015 that more should have been done to screen blood.
SNP Health Secretary Shona Robison has described the scandal as ‘one of the greatest healthcare-related tragedies ever in this country’.
Minutes of papers disclosed by the Mail this week suggest officials knew as early as 1981 that patients were falling sick. Yet it was not until 1986 that supply of the tainted blood stopped.
Theresa May is under growing pressure to order an inquiry into the tragedy – a call that has been backed by Conservative and Labour politicians, victims, lawyers and patient groups.
The papers are being used in legal action lodged at the High Court, in which 300 people are suing the Government.
Miss Palmer said: ‘It destroyed my family. I had two halfbrothers, so I was separated from them when my parents died. They went to live with their father in Wiltshire and I went to live with my auntie and uncle in West Sussex.’
Her maternal grandfather took his own life shortly after her mother died aged 39 in 1993.
Miss Palmer said: ‘He doted on my mum. He found it very difficult to cope with her death.’
Her father had been given a clotting agent called Factor VIII, extracted from donors’ blood, to treat haemophilia. The NHS was low on supplies, so Factor VIII was imported from the US, where it was often taken from high-risk groups including drug addicts, prostitutes and prisoners who had donated their blood for cash.
Miss Palmer, who now lives in Bristol, said: ‘My dad was given Factor VIII not knowing it was infected with HIV and hepatitis C. My dad had known for eight years that he had HIV but my mum was only told shortly before her death.
‘When she was diagnosed she had Burkitt lymphoma, which is a late-stage Aids. She’d obviously had it longer but hadn’t been diagnosed.’
Mr Palmer was told he had HIV in 1985 and died eight years later, aged 34.
His daughter said: ‘My mum wanted justice and was fighting for a few years before she passed away. I’ve got that drive to really continue that for her and to have someone made accountable.’
She added: ‘She wanted someone to be held accountable.
‘I think she just feared for me and my brothers that they weren’t going to be around for us, so it was really a case of trying to make sure our family could live with this afterwards.
‘But there’s been no support system, we’ve been failed by this and living with it as a family.’
Miss Palmer told how her parents suffered from mental health problems while trying to cope with the effects of the illness.
She added: ‘Everybody’s families have gone through absolute trauma and devastation. So many other people have been affected by it that need that closure and justice and someone to be made accountable for it.
‘The Government needs to be held to account.’