News: Infected Blood Victims Compensation

For this post I wanted to summarise the major news items of the past few weeks, which actually relates to a scandal that occurred in the past century.

The news item was covered in all UK newspapers and online news agencies. To give just one reference, here is the main BBC news page: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-69045362 (accessed May 25th 2024)

Chronology

Beginning in the 1970s infected blood was administered to two main classes of patients requiring transfusions:

• People with blood disorders such as haemophilia ( an inherited disorder where the blood does not clot normally)
• People who required blood, or blood products, as part of their treatment

To accommodate the need for blood, a new treatment was developed called factor concentrate, which replaced the missing clotting agent using donated human blood plasma.

The UK was not at the time able to produce enough factor concentrate so the health system relies on US imports.

Unfortunately, US manufacturers pooled plasma from numerous patients without properly screening. This meant that the resulting product had a high risk of being infected with viruses including hepatities and HIV.

Tens of thousands of UK patients were consequently infected.

After years of campaigning by victims and their families, in 2017 the then Prime Minister Theresa May ordered an inquiry.

Inquiry findings

The inquiry report was released earlier this week.

A website has been created to host the report and additional information: https://www.infectedbloodinquiry.org.uk/

The report states that the patients were:

…knowingly exposed to unacceptable risks of infection…

Other shocking conclusions of the report were:

• 3000 patients have already died (10% of those who were given the infected blood product) and the number is set to rise
• The disaster was not an accident – those in authority did not put safety first
• The contaminated products were imported until 1986 and often included blood plasma from US prisoners and drug addicts, who were motivated to donate by monetary concerns
• Successive governments and health officials covered up the scandal, indicating that the contaminated products actually saved lives
• The truth was hidden for decades due to a “lack of openness, transparency and candour” on the part of the NHS and UK Government.
• Proper screening of donated blood for HIV and hepatitis should have been introduced sooner in the UK. Screening began in 1985 even though risk concerns were raised some years earlier

Worringly, health professionals gave reassurance to patients about the safety of these products despite the obvious risks of viral transmission

Compensation details

The Government has released details of the compensation scheme:

[click above image]

In summary, £10bn have been allocated for compensating the victims and their families.

Around 4000 victims have already received £100K; they will soon receive an additional interim payment of £210K.

Over time, the list of citizens eligible for compensation will be expanded to also include families (e.g. children and parents) of those directly affected. Eligibility criteria will depend on criteria such as:

• financial loss due to infection
• care costs
• harm/injury caused
• social impact and loss of autonomy

Conclusions

There are a number of ethical concerns about this case.

Patients were not informed of the risks inherent in these products and therefore agreed to treatment not knowing how likely they were to risk infection.

Successive governments, who should be benevolent towards their citizens, made untrue claims about the treatments’ suitability and steps taken to screen the blood. Again, this meant that patients ‘ best interests were not the top priority.

Any cover-up, I think, in the context of health provision goes against the spirit of the NHS and doctors’ vocation.

From my understanding, the report does not recommend criminal charges; rather, it seems to suggest a collective failure on the part of experts and administrators who should have been more caring.

Thousands have suffered as a result of this scandal, either directly or indirectly.

Monetary compensation goes some way towards atoning for the damage caused but it is of little value to those whose lives have been taken or impacted irreversibly.

I hope the inquiry report at least serves to ensure that scandals on this scale will not occur in future.