NHS and government led ‘chilling’ cover-up of infected blood scandal, inquiry finds
The NHS and the Government took part in a “chilling” cover-up of the infected blood scandal that has claimed more than 3,000 lives, a public inquiry has concluded.
Sir Brian Langstaff, the chairman of the five-year inquiry into the NHS’s worst treatment disaster, said doctors, civil servants and ministers had “closed ranks” to hide the truth for decades.
He said the “horrifying” scandal could and should have been avoided, but a “catalogue of failures” led to “calamity”.
Between 1970 and 1998 more than 3,000 patients “died or suffered miserably” as a result of being given contaminated blood products that infected them with HIV and Hepatitis.
The tragedy happened because medics and successive governments “did not put patient safety first”. When the scandal was exposed, “the response of those in authority served to compound people’s suffering”, Sir Brian said.
He added: “I have to report that it could largely, though not entirely, have been avoided. And I have to report that it should have been.”
Time for national recognition of this disaster
Sir Brian recommended that a compensation scheme be set up immediately for victims and bereaved families, which Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor, is expected formally to accept on Tuesday.
“Now is the time for national recognition of this disaster and for proper compensation to all those who have been wronged,” Sir Brian said.
In a 2,527-page report published on Monday, Sir Brian also warned that a substantial number of people remain unaware that they were given transfusions or other products of infected blood, and are therefore undiagnosed.
They include around 900 people infected with hepatitis C and about 200 people who were infected with HIV – the virus that causes Aids – as children.
Among those who are singled out for criticism are Kenneth Clarke (now Lord Clarke) who, as health minister in 1983, wrongly claimed there was no proof that Aids could be spread through blood products, even though there was already evidence of a link.
The inquiry’s remit did not include making any recommendations for prosecutions, but the report is likely to be studied closely by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service for any evidence of criminal liability.
Children were ‘betrayed’
One of the most shocking episodes in the scandal happened at Lord Mayor Treloar School for children with disabilities in Alton, Hants, where many of the pupils were haemophiliacs.
Children there were “betrayed” when they were used as “objects” of experimental trials. They were not always told they were part of a trial, then suffered a “nightmare of tragic proportion” after being given disease-ridden drugs, Sir Brian said.
Young boys at the school were told in batches of five if they had or had not tested positive for HIV in front of each other before being immediately sent back to class.
In other cases, doctors made the “unconscionable” decision not to tell pupils and parents they had tested positive for the disease at all.
Sir Brian said of the scandal overall: “It will be astonishing to anyone who reads this report that these events could have happened in the UK… that a level of suffering which it is difficult to comprehend, still less understand, has been caused to so many.”
He said victims “have been forced into a decades-long battle for the truth”.
He said: “Successive governments claimed that patients had received the best medical treatment available at the time, and that blood screening had been introduced at the earliest opportunity. Both claims were untrue.”
Sir Brian’s recommendations include that the statutory duty of candour that currently applies to doctors should be extended to NHS managers, executives and board members and that the “culture of defensiveness” in the NHS must end.
He also said the Government should pay for a public memorial to the victims and for a second memorial at Treloar’s School.
