Comtaminated Blood

[Willy Nilly]

A friend of mine is married to a lovely lady with a bleeding disorder. As a result she has, at some unspecified point in time, received contaminated blood.

She's an intelligent woman that had a decent career in IT. However she had to give up work a long time ago because of the Hep C she received and the antiviral medication she was taking which made he exhausted.

Annnnyway, this isn't about her.

I've know her husband 20 odd years and her not quite so long, but still a long time and she's always been ill but never complained.

A couple of years ago in January I was talking to her Husband and he said she was going to parliament to listen to a debate on contaminated blood and he couldn't go. I said I'd go instead.

The following is what I'd types on a leading social media site when I got home.

Today I have Mostly Been to The Houses of Parliament. My good friend from college has a wife with a bleeding disorder called Von Willebrand disease. When she was a little 'un she was give blood contaminated with Hep C and is one of 4000 or so others given contaminated blood. Any road there was a debate in Parliament today on the subject and I was invited along.

We started in the public gallery for the debate on what they are to debate before the election, I forget what the debate was called. William Hague was in charge and was very good. It was interesting to see how he batted away the PMQ style questions, then in the next breath answer questions on completely different subject.

Then on to the main event, the discussion on contaminated blood. Long story short, it lasted over 3 hours and at the start John Bercow asked if back benchers would limit their statements to 7 minutes. On the wall are numerous telly screens, some have live pictures, some from the BBC with subtitles, one tells you who is speaking and 2 are a stop watch with a 7 minute countdown. All of the back benchers very skillfully managed to keep their statements to within a couple of seconds of 7 minutes.

I'll not bore you with all of the gory details, and there were a lot. The MP that started proceedings was welling up with tears reading his statement, to give an idea of the subject matter. One spoke of a 7 year old boy that died of AIDS given to him from contaminated blood. A 8 year old girl contracted Hep C after having a tooth and her tonsils out. One man contracted Heps A, B and C and countless other awful accounts came from all sides of the house. There has also been a considerable cover up of the facts. One man's doctor wrote to his employers advising them he (the patient) had Hep C 12 months before he told the patient and the first time it was mentioned to my friends wife was when it came out in passing at a hospital appointment in her 30's when she would have been contaminated 20 years before.

Anyway,I think they said it is the 15th biggest peace time disaster in British history. To put that into context, Aberfan was 113th. 1800 people have already died.

After all this was over we had a coffee and the MP's intern (who looked a bit like Kyle Gass) took us around the Houses of Parliament. He was probably more enthusiastic that knowledgeable, but clearly loved it there. We sat in the public gallery in The Lords for a bit then went into a few of the committee rooms then onto Portcullis house. All in all a great day and I hope these poor people get what they deserve.

There seems to have been a little more momentum gathering in the media of late, it really is about time they got some justice.

http://contaminatedbloodcampaign.co.uk/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Contaminated-Blood-...

http://www.taintedblood.info/index.php

[Willy Nilly]

I'm not seeking any justice personally.

My understanding is that the blood was sourced from prisoners in the US, which is hardly going to be a reputable source. Nobody has been held to account for this, mainly because it has been thousands of individual cases rather than one big disaster. Had it been one big case, people would have at the very least been struck off medical registers and possibly jailed.

There were plenty of examples of people loosing careers and becoming destitute due to the illnesses brought on by receiving contaminated blood, so it probably wouldn't be unreasonable to have them compensated for loss of earnings based on an average wage. Quite how you adequately give some justice to a child that went to the dentist and came home with AIDS is not something I am able to comment on and am just trying to bring this subject to the attention of the wise owls of PH.

[Willy Nilly]

numtumfutunch said:

Willy Nilly said:

I'm not seeking any justice personally.

My understanding is that the blood was sourced from prisoners in the US, which is hardly going to be a reputable source.

Sorry to hear about your mates but as I understand it we specifically get our UK blood from healthy volunteers on the high street who are categorically not paid a fee

Hep C seems to be the latest blood bourne tragedy, previously it was the HIV virus being contracted this way

Now both the above are screened there will undoubtedly be another as yet undiscovered one in the future too

I dont see how you can screen for as yet unknown pathogens...................

Where we source blood from today isn't the issue or the reason why so many people have been infected. The issue is people received blood in the 1970's and 80's from prisoner on the US among other places, that was contaminated with various blood bourne infections, Hep C being one of them.

The further issue being that HM Government has and continues to kick this particular can down the street, hoping it will go away, which it will ultimately, when all of the people infected die of their illnesses. In the mean time people are living on benefits and hand out because they cannot work through an illness that was no fault of their own and avoidable.