‘We are not expendable’: UK infected blood victims await justice

Dena Peacock lived with hepatitis C for four decades before learning in 2017 that she was one of the 30,000 victims of what has been called the worst treatment disaster in UK NHS history.

Following complications during the birth of her first son in 1980, Peacock, then 16, was rushed to hospital in Barrow, Cumbria for a blood transfusion. She had the same procedure weeks after welcoming her second.

Blood used in one of the transfusions originated in the US at the height of the Aids epidemic, and Peacock contracted the hepatitis C virus. It left her so exhausted she was bedbound, but a GP for years “brushed off” her fatigue as the tiredness of a young parent.

“It caused me so much mental distress not being listened to,” Peacock said, adding that the “silent killer” virus had turned her life upside down. “You don’t know when you are going to die.”

Between 1970 and the early 1990s, tens of thousands of men, women and children were infected with HIV and hepatitis C through tainted blood transfusions. About 2,900 of them are believed to have died. Many victims had haemophilia, a condition that inhibits blood clotting.

On Monday, a public inquiry that began six years ago will publish its final report into the scandal and seek to bring closure to a dark chapter of British medical history.

The UK government, which previously accepted the “moral case” for compensation, has distributed roughly £400mn to infected individuals and bereaved partners via interim payments of £100,000.

Ministers have been accused of delaying full liability amid concerns about the tight nature of the public finances. But as early as next week the government is expected to set out plans for a victim compensation scheme of at least £10bn.

Relatives and campaigners have despaired at the slow pace of justice in Britain and delays to the final report. Other countries have acted faster, international data collated by the UK inquiry shows.

Canada was the first to commit to compensation, announcing a $150mn package for people who had contracted HIV in 1989. A decade later it pledged a further $1.2bn.

It was followed by Ireland, which in 1991 agreed a deal worth £8.2mn, and Japan. Denmark’s parliament issued a statement of regret and launched a fund worth £2.2mn in 1995.

A full picture of the total sums paid globally has been difficult to ascertain because different schemes have been rolled out over years and covered different types of victims, inquiry documents show.

Differences in approaches to accountability are clear, however. No Briton has been prosecuted in relation to the scandal. But in 1999, a former health minister in France was convicted of manslaughter in relation to the deaths of two people who received HIV-infected blood. About 4,000 people in the country were given contaminated blood products.

The UK inquiry, chaired by Sir Brian Langstaff, has taken written and oral evidence from victims, their relatives, former and current top politicians and charities.

In his final report, the former High Court judge is expected to address the extent to which there was an official cover-up; the inquiry has heard some doctors experimented on vulnerable haemophiliacs without their knowledge or consent.

NHS transfusions caused about 1,250 people, including 380 children, to contract HIV, which has no cure, according to data from the inquiry. Of the 1,250, three-quarters are estimated to have died.

Publishing his second interim report in April 2023, Langstaff urged ministers to set up an arms-length body in order to oversee a compensation scheme, noting many of those affected were “on borrowed time”.

“This has been described as the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS, and we have much to learn as a nation to help ensure that people never suffer in a similar way again,” he added.

Peacock, who will travel to London to hear the inquiry’s conclusions, said: “Monday will be very emotional. The government has dragged their heels for so many years and there will still be people out there who don’t know they were infected.”

“I have met lovely people over the past few years who have not survived to see the end of this inquiry,” she added. “We are not expendable. We haven’t even had an official apology.”

The UK government said the scandal was an “appalling tragedy . . . that never should have happened”, that “justice needs to be done and swiftly” and that it “had committed to establishing a new body to deliver an infected blood compensation scheme”.

The government has previously said it will make a statement in the House of Commons on Langstaff’s final report no more than 25 sitting days after its release. Some parliamentarians are seeking to force the government, if it introduces legislation to establish a compensation scheme, to roll it out within three months.

The inquiry has heard testimony from more than 370 witnesses since 2018. One is Stuart Cantrill, who was 15 when Barrie, his 48-year-old haemophiliac father, died of Aids in 1989. It was only when Cantrill saw stories of other tainted blood transfusions in the news that he realised how his father had been among thousands affected.

“My dad was never able to run around like other dads,” Cantrill said. “And given the stigma at the time around HIV and Aids, my parents tried to hide as much information from me as they could, including removing the labels from his medication.”

No amount of money would “make up for the loss and the suffering”, Cantrill added, although he was hopeful that Monday would mark the “beginning of the end in terms of setting out a sequence of events that will give us as much closure as anyone can get”.

“I want complete transparency about the decisions that were made: who knew what about the risks and who then chose to ignore them.”