About 30,000 people and another 3,000 died in the United Kingdom when they were infused with infected blood or blood products
British prime minister Rishi Sunak on Tuesday apologised to the House of Commons for the findings of a report that has revealed that in the 1970s and 1980s, infusion of infected blood and blood products had left about 3,000 dead and another 30,000 infected with deadly pathogens including, but not limited to HIV. Sunak said that he was “truly sorry”.
This is the worst scandal to hit the National Health Service since its inception. The UK government has announced that it will compensate people affected by the tragedy and the compensation amount is likely to be to the tune of over 10 billion pounds. The final report on the infected blood scandal has just been made public. Many of the infections happened during the infusion of Factor VIII – a component of blood that helps in clotting – to haemophiliacs. Factor VIII is extracted by combining blood plasma for several thousand donors. The risk of infection is high because if even one unit of blood carried an infection, the whole batch would be infected.
According to the report of the Infected Blood Inquiry, among those that received transfusions were trauma and surgical patients. Many were also infected with Hepatitis from the transfused blood. “I want to make a wholehearted and unequivocal apology for this terrible injustice,” Sunak told MPs.
