United Kingdom: authorities exposed thousands of people to contaminated blood

British authorities and the country’s health service knowingly exposed tens of thousands of patients to deadly infections through contaminated blood or blood-related products, and covered up the fact for decades, an investigation found Monday.

About 3,000 people in the UK are thought to have died and many others left ill for life after receiving blood or blood products contaminated with HIV or hepatitis from the 1970s to the early 1990s.

The scandal is widely considered the deadliest disaster in the history of Britain’s National Health Service, since it was created in 1948.

Former judge Brian Langstaff, who led the inquiry, harshly criticized successive governments and medical professionals for “a catalog of failures” and for refusing to accept responsibility in order to protect their reputations or save money. He found there were deliberate attempts to conceal the scandal and evidence that government officials destroyed documents.

“This disaster was no accident. The infections occurred because those in positions of authority — doctors, blood services and successive governments — did not prioritize the patient’s health.”he declared. “The response of those in positions of authority further aggravated the suffering of those affected”.

For decades, activist groups have been demanding accountability and compensation from the government. The inquiry was finally approved in 2017, and over the past four years has been examining evidence from more than 5,000 witnesses and more than 100,000 documents.

Many of those affected had hemophilia, a condition that affects the blood’s ability to clot. In the 1970s, patients received a new treatment that the United Kingdom had imported from the United States. Some of the plasma used to create the products was traced to high-risk donors, including prisoners who had received money in exchange for blood samples.