Contaminated blood
Discussion
Saw this was known long ago:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/27/re...
Ongoing huge issue.
At the time, in the early 1980s, my late father was on army loan to the Bahrain Defence Force (from 1979), part of a Royal Army Medical Corps team helping set up an Army Healthcare Service for the Bahrainis, from scratch. Loan Service meant British soldiers in another uniform, and with local COs. So his CO was the Bahraini head of the hospital.
The Bahrainis wanted to set up a blood service, and thought about buying in these American products because the British NHS was doing so, so it must be ok. The British Army didn't do this; they used donated blood from service personnel for sera etc. My dad knew about the American products, that they were coming from prisoners and down and outs. He knew screening doesn't get everything, and couldn't detect the unknowns (HIV was an unknown at the time, Hepatitis wasn't). Starting from squaddies (they are already kind of prescreened for disease) helps reduce the risk, combined with normal screening. I think he wasn't alone at the time knowing these products were extremely risky. I wonder if there was any push in the MOD to cut out the normal blood donation service. The British Army blood transfusion service is, or was, seperate to the NHS; they didn't use NHS supplies.
In the Arab world at the time, there was a cultural resistance to blood donation. His CO, being British medical trained, knew about the importance of blood donation, but it was another thing to get locals to donate. But my father was sufficiently persuasive for the Bahrainis to set up blood donation clinics; the incentive they decided was for the soldiers was some extra leave.
With his Bahraini Path Lab team in 1980. The ones not in uniform were "pinched" from a government lab in the capital. His two sergeants were good, but only one could be sent back to the UK to go on a course, that would make him a Warrant Officer. And that was because he was Sunni. The other, Shia'a, never could outrank him. A shame, because they were friends.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/27/re...
Ongoing huge issue.
At the time, in the early 1980s, my late father was on army loan to the Bahrain Defence Force (from 1979), part of a Royal Army Medical Corps team helping set up an Army Healthcare Service for the Bahrainis, from scratch. Loan Service meant British soldiers in another uniform, and with local COs. So his CO was the Bahraini head of the hospital.
The Bahrainis wanted to set up a blood service, and thought about buying in these American products because the British NHS was doing so, so it must be ok. The British Army didn't do this; they used donated blood from service personnel for sera etc. My dad knew about the American products, that they were coming from prisoners and down and outs. He knew screening doesn't get everything, and couldn't detect the unknowns (HIV was an unknown at the time, Hepatitis wasn't). Starting from squaddies (they are already kind of prescreened for disease) helps reduce the risk, combined with normal screening. I think he wasn't alone at the time knowing these products were extremely risky. I wonder if there was any push in the MOD to cut out the normal blood donation service. The British Army blood transfusion service is, or was, seperate to the NHS; they didn't use NHS supplies.
In the Arab world at the time, there was a cultural resistance to blood donation. His CO, being British medical trained, knew about the importance of blood donation, but it was another thing to get locals to donate. But my father was sufficiently persuasive for the Bahrainis to set up blood donation clinics; the incentive they decided was for the soldiers was some extra leave.
With his Bahraini Path Lab team in 1980. The ones not in uniform were "pinched" from a government lab in the capital. His two sergeants were good, but only one could be sent back to the UK to go on a course, that would make him a Warrant Officer. And that was because he was Sunni. The other, Shia'a, never could outrank him. A shame, because they were friends.
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