The final report on the UK’s infected blood inquiry will be released on Monday, nearly six years after it began. The investigation looked into how thousands of people contracted HIV or hepatitis after receiving tainted blood transfusions in the 1970s and 1980s.
This scandal is considered the deadliest to have hit Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) since its inception in 1948, with over 3,000 people thought to have died as a result of the infections.
What is UK’s infected blood scandal?
In the 1970s and 1980s, thousands of patients in the United Kingdom who needed blood transfusions were exposed to blood tainted with hepatitis, including Hepatitis C and HIV.
In the early 1970s, the NHS launched Factor VIII, a new blood plasma-based treatment for hemophilia, a blood clotting disorder.
Due to increased demand, the NHS imported Factor VIII from the United States, where plasma donations were frequently obtained from high-risk groups such as prisoners and drug users, increasing the danger of contamination.
Factor VIII was created by combining plasma from thousands of donors, so one contaminated donor may contaminate the entire batch.
The investigation estimated that nearly 30,000 people were infected with tainted blood through transfusions or Factor VIII treatment.
The report is expected to blame pharmaceutical companies, medical professionals, civil servants, and politicians, albeit many of those involved have since died. It is expected to result in a huge compensation bill, putting pressure on the British government to pay quickly.
Campaigners claim that it has been known since the 1940s that heating can destroy hepatitis in plasma products and that Factor VIII could have been made safe before being distributed. The inquiry is expected to conclude that lessons from as early as the 1940s were ignored.
