On Monday, I learned that 33 years after I received a transfusion of contaminated blood, the government recognized that I and thousands of others were victims of a corrupt and careless system and deserved compensation. (Britain’s contaminated blood scandal worsened by ‘appalling’ cover-up, investigation reveals, May 20). This is a hollow victory.
After gastric surgery, I received a blood transfusion containing hepatitis C. Unlike many others, I was lucky to survive. My thoughts go out to their families. I’m surviving so far, but hepatitis C can cause liver cancer at any time. It’s a ticking time bomb and it’s very scary.
Unlike others, I received an apology from executives at Southampton Blood Transfusion Service in 1991. We met after I donated blood (which I always do) and he told me that the blood he took was contaminated. I explained that in March 1991, in September 1991, when I received the blood transfusion, the hospital had the testing capacity, but they had not introduced the test because they could not afford it.
The sad situation has been made worse by years of unjust policies by politicians. Let’s hope the government has a plan in place to prevent this terrible situation from happening again.
Stuart Bolitho
Stevenage, Hertfordshire
No one knows how many people died from infected blood. My father passed away in 1981, four months before his 65th birthday. Having worked as a manual laborer all his life, he was a very healthy and active man, despite having had surgery on his knee.
During the last 18 months of his life, his health deteriorated, starting with extreme fatigue and gradually worsening until he became critically ill. Cold sore-like symptoms appeared all over his face, he lost a lot of weight, and he was hospitalized multiple times. Despite thorough tests, no cause of his illness was found.
Immediately after his death, an AIDS awareness campaign began. And looking at the victims of AIDS, I felt as if I was watching my father in the last years of his life. There is no doubt that he died of AIDS early on, before blood tests were done.
In the early 1980s, many people must have died from infected blood. Let us not forget the unknown victims of this terrible scandal.
Marjorie Haynes
Frome, Somerset
In the 1970s, I was a student of Professor Richard Titmuss at the London School of Economics. I also read his book, The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy. When this book was first published in 1970, it was ranked by the New York Times as one of his ten most important books of that year. This book would have influenced health policy in the 1970s. For the next 50 years. At the very least, alarm bells should have sounded louder after a decade of so much concern about AIDS.
Titmuss wrote a comparative study of blood donations in the United States and Britain, raising serious economic, political, and moral questions. He pointed to the UK system, which relied on voluntary blood donors, and the US system, where donors were paid and lacked proper testing, which meant some of the donors were infected with hepatitis or HIV. compared with the system of He showed how a system based on altruism is more effective than one that treats human blood as a commodity. He couldn’t have been more right.
Christine Hancock
Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, 1989-2001
