Many relatives of victims with infected blood transfusions are considering suing the NHS. If you have had an NHS blood transfusion what are the risks involved?
In the 1970’s and 1980’s many people in the UK requiring blood transfusions received blood from ‘skid row’. Much of this blood contained diseases such as Hepatitis C and HIV and led to the recipients of the transfusions receiving the same diseases and infections. Relatives of the families are now considering suing the NHS.
During the 1970’s and 1980’s the NHS imported blood from American suppliers who were paying doners for their blood. As many of these victims were on ‘skid row’ they were already carrying infectious diseases which passed to the recipients with a blood transfusion.
4,670 people became infected with Hepatitis C and a quarter of them also contracted the HIV virus. Already 1,757 of these victims have since died.
Lord Archer of Sandwell has chaired an enquiry into the process in which the companies processing the blood made a profit and concluded that commercial interests outweighed the public health concerns. The enquiry board looking into this recommended that compensation should be payable at the same level as those that received compensation in Ireland (around 400,000 Euros). They also recommended counselling, free prescriptions, physiotherapy and home nursing where necessary.
During the enquiry over 20,000 documents were reviewed and evidence was obtained from 3,000 witnesses.
Many of the victims suffered from haemophilia which prevented a blood clotting protein from forming leading to regular blood transfusions. The Haemophilia Society continues to campaign for levels of compensation for victims of infected blood transfusions to be increased. It is thought that the findings of the Enquiry Board will lead to many of the families of the victims taking compensation claims and suing the NHS.
It is possible that the claim will be taken as a group compensation claims where all parties can pool their resources which will give them better prospects of success, as medical negligence claims are notoriously difficult to win.
Since April 2004 the NHS has attempted to prevent further blood transfusion infections by not allowing anyone else who has already received a blood transfusion from providing one. Whilst this will help those in the future, it does not help those that received the infected blood in the 1970’s and 1980’s and have already been infected.
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