The contaminated blood scandal would never have happened if officials had heated medical products to prevent potential infections, leading campaigners have said. The Infected Blood Inquiry, set up in 2017 to examine what is the biggest scandal in NHS history, will publish its final report on Monday. It is expected to reveal that officials and medics knew how to safeguard patients when giving them blood products but chose to ignore basic medical practices.
More than 30,000 people in the UK were given blood products – including from drug users, prisoners and prostitutes – infected with HIV and hepatitis C on the NHS between 1970 and the early 90s. Two groups were affected: haemophiliacs, those who were given clotting agents that are absent in their blood, called Factor VIII and IX, and produced from donated human blood plasma; and people given contaminated blood transfusions after childbirth or medical treatments. More than 3,000 people have died and many more have suffered decades of debilitating ill-health.
The Inquiry will determine where responsibility lies with the scandal, amid allegations of a decades long cover-up by the NHS. It heard evidence that another plasma-derived blood product used to treat burns, called albumin, had been heat-treated since the 40s, specifically to kill hepatitis. It would not be until 1985 that all Factor VIII products were heat-treated to kill the HIV virus while UK blood donations were not routinely screened for Hepatitis C until 1991.
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