The Journal’s 24-year fight to get justice for blood victims
It has been a fight for justice that has consumed all of the century so far – and The Journal has been involved from the early days. SAM VOLPE reports
THE first headline highlighting the infected blood scandal – in The Journal on August 5, 2000 – starkly called it ‘A great betrayal’ and characterised what had happened to Peter Longstaff.
He, as we knew then and now, was far from the only one.
This was the beginning of The Journal’s Bad Blood campaign, and in the 24 years since then, reporters have highlighted repeatedly how in Newcastle, at the haemophilia centre attached to the Royal Victoria Infirmary, along with hospitals around the country, haemophiliacs were given a so-called “miracle” treatment which in fact killed them or – at best – condemned them to chronic ill-health.
Others to be infected received tainted blood transfusions – often in cases where the need for a transfusion was not medically clear.
This campaign was not the first reporting on the scandal, but it led to increased pressure on Government and saw crucial issues brought to light.
Now, Sir Brian Langstaff is set to deliver his final report today into the circumstances of the scandal which has seen thousands die at the hands of the health service – and the associated “cover-up”. He has already recommended the Government act to bring in full compensation, and the Government could this week, finally, do so.
He has already told how there were “wrongs done on individual, collective and systemic levels”. What comes this week could be the vindication of a decades-long campaign that predates even that day in 2000 when Peter’s story was front page news in The Journal.
However, getting to this point has been a long battle for campaigners – many of whom have died in the intervening years. At the time of the first Bad Blood article in 2000, Peter was dying. He had HIV and hepatitis C – and had been given these diseases through treatment he was given by the NHS for his haemophilia.
Recalling The Journal’s campaigning, and the families and individuals who have worked with journalists to tell this story over the decades, is hardly possible in a single article – and over the coming weeks, following the inquiry report, we will continue to remember those to have played a part.
Peter had by 2000 already watched his brother die – and at the time The Journal health correspondent Louella Houldcroft wrote that he had lost 77 friends. The Journal said it was “time for answers”. Speaking then, a senior
doctor, Dr Harash Narang, told the paper: “The risk of infection was known and never communicated.”
Dr Narang would know – he was the medical expert, working at Newcastle General Hospital, called in to find ways to use heat to kill off viruses in the blood products haemophiliacs like Peter relied on as long ago as 1985.
In 2000, only 18 people out of of 95 then known to have had been infected with both viruses were alive. The number has dwindled since – and now nationally there are just handfuls of people who may live to see justice.
Nationally, we know that thousands have died because they were given HIV, hepatitis C, or both on the NHS. In that initial piece, which ran with the simple front page – “BLOOD SCANDAL” – Louella laid out much of what was known back then.
This included that as early as 1975 the World Health Organisation told Governments to ensure blood stocks were safe, yet plans to eliminate a reliance on imported blood did not move forward. The story also highlighted the 1990 “waiver” HIV-infected haemophiliacs were pressured to sign in order to access an “ex-gratia” payment from the Government after litigation – this clause meant they gave up the right to make claims over further infections.
Those involved were not told about the risk of what was then known as “non-A, non-B hepatitis”.
Over the following years, The Journal published tens of articles – and spoke to many people who had either themselves been infected or seen loved ones suffer the same fate, both in the North East, around the UK and even in New Zealand.
Pivotal articles as part of the campaign included the then-exclusive interview with former Health Secretary David Owen, who broke his silence on the scandal after decades, saying: “It is one of the few things that has continued to anger me ever since. I can’t believe that such a terrible thing should have happened, destroying the lives of so many people, and all these years later it has still not been resolved.”
Lord Owen had been in office in 1975 and said the UK should become self-sufficient in its blood supply within 18 months. This would have reduced the risk posed by blood products (though not eliminated it). However, it did not happen for many years – and it was left to campaigners like Peter and his wife Carol Grayson to show how imported blood products from the USA, which could be traced to specific prisons and even specific donors, contained the lethal viruses.
In 2000, The Journal spoke to Linda Miller, whose brother Bud had been imprisoned in the US and suffered hepatitis. She described how, despite being visibly ill, her brother’s blood was taken – and used in blood products given to UK haemophiliacs.
Later in the decade, The Journal told how Peter went on “treatment strike”, demanding he did not receive treatment derived from humans, given that a safer, synthetic treatment was available. His action eventually saw NHS policy change, but not before his own health worsened.
Also in 2003, The Journal investigated how many “haemophiliacs up and down the country were screened for the hepatitis C virus” but not told until years afterwards. There were “renewed calls” for a full public inquiry, but it would take 14 years for this to happen.
Peter died in 2005, and following his death, Carol took an MA at Sunderland University which involved an analysis of the blood trade and uncovered a tranche of until-then considered destroyed documents found in the possession of
Tyneside lawyers.
These documents included points of evidence, such as how senior medics studied which brand of blood product had greater risks of hepatitis, and how previously untreated patients were considered “useful” for studies.
In 2007, the Government launched the Archer Inquiry – though it was non-statutory, not having the power to compel witnesses. At the end of the inquiry, The Journal’s campaign was praised, but, the best part of two decades on, those infected and affected still await justice.
Speaking then, reporter Louella said: “No-one could have envisaged it would take so long to get a result. I think what struck me at the time was the strength of the evidence.
“Thousands of people had died as a result of treatment that was supposed to make them better and there was clear documentation about where it had come from. But despite the evidence, no-one was listening to these patients and their families.”
Little had changed until the advent of the Infected Blood Inquiry, which – unlike its predecessor – had the power to compel witnesses to give evidence.
In one shocking session, former Health Secretary Norman Fowler suggested former PM Margaret Thatcher’s “attitude to AIDs” had blocked progress on compensation.
Now, campaigners hope they will be at last be vindicated when Sir Brian Langstaff’s final report is delivered today. If they are, it will only be because those in power have recognised what has been known for so many years.
As Dr Narang said 24 years ago: “What was so dreadfully wrong at the time was that the risks of infection were known for many years and yet this information was never communicated to patients.”
The Government has promised those infected and affected will receive compensation this year.