Inquiry into UK blood scandal set to be ‘tinged with sadness’
An inquiry into the contaminated blood scandal which has left 2,400 people dead – including 70 in Wales – is to be launched.
One survivor, who lives in Penarth, said that the news is welcomed but “tinged with sadness”.
Prime Minister Theresa May has said she and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt believed an inquiry was necessary.
Details of the UK-wide investigation have yet to be finalised, and consultations will take place with those people affected as to how best to proceed.
The Prime Minister’s spokesman told a Westminster briefing: “Jeremy Hunt said that 2,400 people had died and it was necessary to establish the causes of this appalling injustice.”
Mrs May’s spokesman said the Prime Minister considered the contaminated blood situation a “scandal”.
He said: “Consultation will now take place with those affected to decide exactly what form the inquiry will take, such as a Hillsboroughstyle independent panel or a judgeled statutory inquiry.
“It is a tragedy that has caused immeasurable hardship and pain for all those affected and a full inquiry to establish the truth of what happened is the right course of action to take.
“It is going to be a wide-ranging inquiry.”
David Thomas, 46, a dad-of-two, from Penarth, was infected with Hepatitis C as a teenager between 1982 and 1983.
He believes his infection came as a result of being hospitalised with a nosebleed which lasted three weeks.
Nearly 30 years later, in 2009, doctors discovered his liver was 4/5 of the way to cirrhosis.
He has described his life being turned “upside down” by the diagnosis.
Mr Thomas said that news of the inquiry was “tinged with sadness”.
“I am definitely enthused and extremely happy but in some ways it’s sad because it’s taken them this long to do the right thing. In that time, many people that I knew are sadly no longer with us.”
He said he had been very optimistic that an inquiry would be ordered in the wake of new evidence being unearthed by the family of another victim.
“This is what we’ve been calling for.”
He said the terms of how the inquiry will be carried out are yet to be determined, complicated by health being devolved since the scandal.
“Ultimately, it will have implications. What will happen as a consequence of this, if the Department of Health are found to be at fault for decisions made back in the day, will tie in with the devolved administrations.”
The move came just hours before MPs held an emergency debate on the contaminated blood scandal.
Commons Speaker John Bercow granted the debate after a request from Labour’s Diana Johnson, who said ministers had failed to consider evidence of criminal activity.
Former minister Ms Johnson called the contaminated blood scandal “the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS”.
The UK imported supplies of the clotting agent Factor VIII from the US, some of which turned out to be infected – and much of the plasma used to make the product came from donors like prison inmates in the US, who sold their blood.
Cardiff South and Penarth MP Stephen Doughty spoke during the debate and paid tribute to Ms Johnson saying she had worked “doggedly” to get the inquiry.
Julie Morgan, AM for Cardiff North and chair of the Cross-Party Group on Haemophilia and Contaminated Blood, said: “The reason the people affected by this scandal, led by Haemophilia Wales, feel they now need a public inquiry is simple: it is a quest for the truth.
“They have been on a long journey, from individuals and their families first being told that they have been given contaminated blood and that they could develop HIV or liver disease, to dealing with increasingly poor health, to fighting for compensation payments.
“This is a scandal that I have been campaigning on, along with Haemophilia Wales and members of the Cross-Party Group on Contaminated Blood which I chair, since I was an MP in the late 1990s. The announcement of a public inquiry is fantastic news for the families affected. I hope this will finally help them get the answers they need.”
Plaid Cymru’s Rhun ap Iorwerth added: “As one of a cross-party group in the Assembly that proposed a motion calling for an inquiry, I was pleased to hear this announcement today.
“It is the pressure from the families that has counted and it has been good to be able to help to ensure that their voices are heard.”