Compensation expected
Report: British authorities covered up blood bank scandal
May 20, 2024, 4:45 p.m
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Thousands of people in Great Britain died as a result of contaminated blood supplies in the 1970s and 1980s. An investigative report reveals active attempts by governments to cover up the country’s biggest health scandal. Thousands of relatives are waiting for a statement from Prime Minister Sunak.
A scandal involving infected blood supplies in Great Britain with more than 3,000 deaths could have been largely avoided. According to the final report on the year-long investigation, there were active cover-up measures by authorities and members of the government in order to hide the truth. Government officials destroyed documents and patients were knowingly exposed to unacceptable infection risks.
The government is expected to award billions of pounds in compensation to victims. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak plans to apologize in Parliament. Victim groups welcomed the report.
In the biggest treatment scandal in the British NHS in the 1970s and 1980s, up to 30,000 people received contaminated blood products. Without informing patients of known risks from high-risk donors, doctors injected blood donations from prison inmates and drug addicts in the United States and Britain.
In many places, the canned food was also heat-treated to purify blood contaminated with HIV. However, this method had already fallen into disrepute since the early 1980s due to its ineffectiveness. According to the report, doctors and health authorities were already aware of the risks of developing a blood disease as a result of the transfusions. As a result, more than 3,000 people died after becoming infected with HIV or hepatitis C through a blood transfusion or treatment.
“People’s trust was abused”
The disaster was no coincidence, the head of the investigative commission, Brian Langstaff, told journalists. “People trusted doctors and the government to keep them safe, and that trust was betrayed.”
The more than 2,500-page report from the “Infected Blood Inquiry” denounces a “catalog of failures.” The consequences were catastrophic not only for the infected people, but also for their relatives, said Langstaff. The catastrophe continues because patients who have suffered “life-destroying” infections continue to die every week.
Claims by various governments that patients received the best medical treatment at the time and blood tests were introduced at the earliest opportunity were untrue, Langstaff said. The truth had been concealed for decades and there was evidence that Ministry of Health documents had been marked for destruction.