Infected blood scandal ‘could lead to people losing honours’
The infected blood scandal could lead to people involved losing honours, a leading campaigner has said.
Jason Evans, director of the Factor 8 group and son of a victim, said he believes some medical professionals could lose their registration or be stripped of honours following the publication of the Infected Blood Inquiry’s final report, expected on Monday.
The scandal saw contaminated blood products made in the US from the blood plasma donations of gay men, prisoners, sex workers and the homeless being bought by the NHS and given to British haemophiliacs in the 1970s and 80s.
Around 1,250 haemophiliacs were infected with HIV from the blood products, such as Factor VIII, and around three-quarters have died. Up to 5,000 haemophiliacs were infected with hepatitis C from their treatments.
Around 3,000 people are thought to have died from infected blood products in the UK.
Mr Evans, whose father Jonathan died when he was four years old after being infected with HIV and hepatitis C, said he would not consider any outcome - compensation or otherwise - as a victory because the scale of the scandal is too vast.
“As far as I see it, maybe there will be compensation, maybe some people will be stripped of their honours, maybe some doctors will be struck off the General Medical Council register - none of it is a victory in my eyes,” he said.
“There is no victory in this, there is no glory, there is no day where we say: ‘Wasn’t this campaign of great success?’”
The 34-year-old, from Coventry, remembers his father being ravaged by Aids before his death aged 31 and has been an indefatigable campaigner advancing the case for justice for infected and affected people.
He added: “It doesn’t bring my dad back, he’s dead, that’s the way it is.
“Do I feel better now? Do I feel better knowing that it could have been avoided? Do I feel better knowing that actions could have been taken which meant he wouldn’t be dead? No. And that’s why I think there’s no victory in this campaign.”
Mr Evans, himself a father to a one-year-old daughter, said that the scandal had “blanketed” his entire life, spanning his father’s health woes and death and his mother’s grief, as well as being labelled “AIDS boy” in school before taking on a full-time roll as a campaigner.
Mr Evans founded the campaign group Factor 8 in 2016, one year before then Prime Minister Theresa May announced a statutory inquiry into the scandal, because he “couldn’t let it go”.
“For me personally, I first went to a meeting with my dad to see his MP in 1990 when I was one year old,” he said.
“And the purpose of that meeting was my dad asking his MP about compensation for victims of the infected blood scandal.
“That fight has gone on for me ever since. 30-plus years, and it feels like we might finally be at the end of that very, very long road.
“My whole life it was just there. I think to some extent, I have become quite numb to it.”
Mr Evans has previously said that after the inquiry he will try and put the infected blood chapter behind him, and he now grapples with what to tell his daughter when she is older.
“One thing I do know is that I don’t want this scandal to alter the life course of another generation of my family,” he said.
“It certainly altered the trajectory of my life. My father was infected with hepatitis C, he was also infected with HIV, and he died in 1993,” he said.
“He was 31 so I am now older than he was when he died. The last time I saw my dad alive it was my fourth birthday in 1993. He was at his parents house - he had chosen basically to die there and he was in a bed very ill - Aids just ravaged him.
“I can remember being stood in this room holding the first Gameboy, the grey one with the purple buttons, and just not really having any understanding of what was really happening.
“But I remember that day clearly. I guess somehow my mind knew to retain that.”
