Ex-pupil sues school over blood scandal

A VICTIM of the infected blood scandal is suing the school where he contracted HIV and hepatitis C after learning that students were treated as medical guinea pigs.

Gary Webster, 56, is taking the action against the Lord Mayor Treloar College in Hampshire, known colloquially as Treloar’s, for negligence and breach of statutory duty over its care of 122 boys with haemophilia who were there in the 1970s and 1980s.

Evidence has emerged during the ongoing inquiry that blood products were tested on pupils without their or their parents’ knowledge.

“It’s come out that trials and research was done without any knowledge of the people it was being done to or their parents,” Mr Webster said. “We were children.”

Of the boys who went to Treloar’s along with Mr Webster, some 90 have died.

Mr Webster is one of just 32 who are alive today. They are among the almost 4,000 people with haemophilia in the UK who were infected with HIV and hepatitis C in the biggest treatment disaster in NHS history.

Thousands of haemophiliacs were treated with Factor 8 – a plasma concentrate that helped their blood clot – which was often infected with viruses.

The story of Treloar’s features in episode two of The Telegraph’s podcast Bed of Lies, out today. The scandal is being investigated by the Infected Blood Inquiry, which heard a week of evidence on Treloar’s in June.

Mr Webster said: “The headmaster and the people in power at the school should have done more. They were acting as our parents. My parents didn’t know what treatment I was on, that I was on trials, only if I told them.”

This month, further evidence from Speywood Laboratories, a pharmaceutical company, confirmed that children at Treloar’s were used to test new blood plasma products from America.

Ex-pupils have long suspected that medical products were tested on them. Mr Webster is the only student taking action for now, but his fellow alumni, and members of the Tainted Blood campaign group, are supportive.

The school said it was unable to comment because this could be subject to a formal claim, Mr Webster said. He would like the school to create a memorial for the people who died after going there.

Bed of Lies is released every Tuesday. Listen to the first episodes now at playpodca.st/bedoflies.