‘I’m pleased to say you have hepatitis C’
Doctor’s ‘flippant’ diagnosis of blood scandal patient
A DOCTOR told a woman awaiting test results after a tainted blood transfusion that he was ‘pleased to say’ she had only contracted hepatitis C.
Eileen Dyson, who received the blood during the birth of her son in 1988, when she was 29, said he was flippant when delivering the news.
The diagnosis came six years after her transfusion – and Miss Dyson says it was 14 years before she was given a treatment plan.
Yesterday, she told an inquiry in Edinburgh that she was kept in the dark about her condition, then ‘lied to’ by NHS chiefs.
Many thousands of patients were infected with HIV and hepatitis C via contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 1980s and 2,400 people died.
The scandal has been labelled the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS.
Miss Dyson gave birth to her son by Caesarean at Bellshill Maternity Hospital, Lanarkshire, but had to receive a blood transfusion during the delivery.
She fell ill and a few days later was told she was a ‘risk to mothers and babies’ and taken to a sealed ward at an infectious diseases unit at a different hospital.
Months later, she was readmitted after vomiting blood. She needed emergency surgery, during which she was given 30 pints of blood.
She was informed she was pregnant again – she subsequently had a baby girl – and would have to return to hospital every three months for blood tests.
Miss Dyson now believes the tests involved doctors using her as a ‘case study’ without giving her treatment.
In 1994, she was told she had hepatitis C and said doctors were ‘evasive’ about how she had contracted it, refusing to answer when she asked if it could have been through a blood transfusion.
She said: ‘The consultant said, “I’m very pleased to tell you that we’ve done all the tests and so many things that we were looking for, you didn’t have. I’m pleased to say that you have hepatitis C”.
‘I didn’t know what it was, so I said “What is hepatitis C? What is it?” And he said it’s a virus usually found in drug users or those with many sexual partners.’
After carrying out her own research, she called the Scottish Blood Transfusion Service to get the batch numbers of the blood she had been given.
She said she was hung up on, then told she had ‘never received any blood transfusions’.
She told the inquiry: ‘It was at that point I knew I was being lied to.’
After being told by a lawyer there was nothing she could do, she said she felt ‘completely abandoned’. She added: ‘I also felt I was of no value in society. I felt completely rejected by society at all its levels.’
She was later told by Glasgow Royal Infirmary her records ‘had been destroyed’ despite attending for eight years. The situation was similar at Wishaw General Hospital.
Miss Dyson has been free of hepatitis C since 2015 after receiving treatment but may still require a liver transplant in the future.
She said that while being treated at Wishaw General Hospital a year ago, she mentioned her missing records and was told it was ‘very unlikely’ by staff who ‘ridiculed’ her and ‘smirked’.
She said: ‘The impact of having your medical records removed is not something from the past, it’s going to affect me for the rest of my life.’
Also giving evidence, John McDougall said his son Euan died of Aids contracted through blood products used to treat haemophilia.
Euan was diagnosed with HIV in 1985, aged seven. He suffered bouts of paralysis and gradually went blind before dying in January 1994.
Mr McDougall said medics at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children at Yorkhill in Glasgow refused heattreated products on the grounds of cost and efficacy, but within six weeks of Euan’s death began to do so. He said: ‘It think it took that death to spur the appropriate health authorities, certainly in Scotland, into action. It took a death.’
On attempting to access his son’s medical records, he was told there was no trace of them. Mr McDougall said he wanted to know why Yorkhill still used American ‘Factor VIII’ blood products when elsewhere in Scotland their use had stopped.
He also questioned when heattreated products had started being produced.
He added: ‘I’ve waited to know these things for 35 years.’
The inquiry continues.
‘I knew I was being lied to’