A MULTI-BILLION compensation package for victims of the infected blood scandal was finally announced by ministers today.
Interim payments of £220,000 will be made in the next 90 days for people who will not survive to receive the full amount.
PAVictims of the infected blood scandal are finally learning of their compensation today[/caption]
UK PARLIAMENT/UNPIXSRishi Sunak making an historic government apology yesterday[/caption]
Tens of thousands of infected and affected people are in line for government cash under a long-awaited pay-out scheme.
The biggest health disaster in British history saw more than 30,000 patients given HIV and hepatitis via contaminated blood between the 1970s and 1990s.
More than 3,000 have since died but their families are eligible for compensation money.
Cabinet Office Minister John Glen said today the “expectation is that final payments will start before the end of the year” although money will be fast-tracked for those where “time is of the essence”.
Compensation will be based on five separate categories including financial and social impact.
Rishi Sunak is believed to have earmarked around £10billion but yesterday vowed: “Whatever it costs to deliver this scheme, we will pay.”
Five categories of infected blood compensation
FIVE types of compensation will be paid out to the infected and affected:
Injury impact award for the physical and mental suffering caused by infection
Social impact award to address the stigma or social isolation as a result of the infection
An autonomy award, acknowledging how family and private life was disrupted during this time
A care award to to compensate for past and future care needs of anyone infected
A financial loss award for past and future financial losses suffered as a result of the infection
Mr Glen today said that an arms-length body had been set up to process compensation claims.
He told MPs: “To be crystal clear: if you have been directly or indirectly infected by NHS blood, blood products, or tissue contaminated with HIV or hepatitis C or have developed a chronic infection from blood contaminated with hepatitis B, you will be eligible to claim compensation under the scheme.
“And where an infected person has died, but would have been eligible under these criteria, compensation will be paid to their estate.
“And this will include where a person was infected with hepatitis B and died during the acute period of infection.”
Distinguished barrister Sir Robert Francis has been appointed to lead the compensation process.
BLOOD SCANDAL
It follows yesterday’s release of Sir Brian Langstaff’s public inquiry that found a state-wide cover-up spanning decades.
Making an historic apology on behalf of the government, the PM called it a “day of shame for the British state.”
He added: “From the National Health Service to the civil service, to ministers and successive governments, at every level, the people and institutions in which we place our trust failed in the most harrowing and devastating way.
“They failed the victims and their families and they failed this country.
“Sir Brian finds a catalogue of systemic collective and individual failures, each on its own serious.
“And taken together, amounting to a calamity. And the result of this inquiry should shake our nation to its core.”
Campaigners have complained that full compensation has not been paid sooner following previous publication of two interim reports in 2022 and 2023.
The inquiry found that the government has compounded the misery of victims with the “sluggish pace” and lack of transparency on compensation.
NHS blood scandal: The report’s key findings
Key failures highlighted in the report include:
A failure to act over risks linked to contaminated blood – some of which were known before the NHS was established in 1948.
The slowness of the response to the scandal; for instance, it was apparent by mid-1982 that there was a risk that the cause of Aids could be transmitted by blood and blood products but the government failed to take steps to reduce that risk.
Tests on blood were not introduced as quickly as they could have been.
Patients and the wider public were given false reassurances.
There were delays informing people about their infections – sometimes for years – and they were told in “insensitive” and “inappropriate” ways.
Patients were “cruelly” told repeatedly that they had received the best treatment available.
People with bleeding disorders were treated without proper consent and research was carried out on them without their knowledge.
Children with bleeding disorders who attended Treloar College, where pupils with haemophilia were treated at an on-site NHS centre, were treated as “objects for research”. The report said these children were given “multiple, riskier” treatments. Other children with bleeding disorders were also given treatment “unnecessarily”.
Regulatory failures, including the licensing of dangerous products, and failure to remove them from the market when concerns were raised.
Instead of ensuring a sufficient supply of UK-made treatments for haemophilia, the NHS continued to import the blood clotting blood plasma treatment Factor VIII from the US – where manufacturers paid high-risk donors, including prison inmates and drug users. The UK blood services continued to collect blood donations from prisons until 1984.
In terms of blood transfusions, blood donors were not screened properly and there were delays in blood screening. Too many transfusions were given when they were not necessarily needed.
Sir Brian added: “People whose lives were torn apart by the wrongs done at individual, collective and systemic levels, and by the way in which successive governments responded to what happened, still have no idea as to the shape, extent or form of any compensation scheme.”
Interim payments of £100,000 were handed to 4,000 victims and their families.
Since yesterday’s final report publication, there have been growing calls to prosecute individuals and departments implicated in the scandal.
Des Collins, a senior partner at Collins Solicitors, which is representing nearly 1,500 families, told The Sun that the NHS Trust which employed Professor Bloom – who is criticised repeatedly in the report – should refer themselves to the CPS.
Clive Smith, chairman of The Haemophilia Society, said the finding is “no surprise” and is something campaigners have known for decades.
He added: “I think many of the politicians should hang their heads in shame.”
“No single person is responsible for this scandal. It’s been the result of generations of denial, delay and cover-up.”
The infected blood scandal in numbers
IT’S thought that tens of thousands of people in the UK were infected with contaminated blood between the 1970s and early 1990s.
Statisticians advising the Infected Blood Inquiry have come up with a number of different figures about how many people have been infected, but they have stressed there is “considerable uncertainty about the conclusions”.
Commentators have suggested that the figures – particularly those around hepatitis C infections – should be seen as a “starting point”.
According to the inquiry’s Statistics Expert Group:
Around 1,250 people with bleeding disorders such as haemophilia were infected with HIV through infected blood products.
Some 80 to 100 people were infected with HIV as a result of a blood transfusion – which could have been given following an accident, during surgery, during childbirth or another medical procedure.
Between 3,650 and 6,250 people with bleeding disorders were infected with hepatitis C – this includes 1,250 people who were infected with both HIV and hepatitis C.
Some 26,800 people were infected with hepatitis C as a result of having a blood transfusion – though statisticians said this number could vary anywhere between 21,300 and 38,800 people.
Some 22,000 of these were deemed to be chronically infected as they survived more than six months after their transfusion.
Among people who received hepatitis C as a result of a blood transfusion, 64 per cent were women.
Of the 26,800 hepatitis C infections which occurred as a result of a blood transfusion, 22,000 were among patients in England, 2,740 occurred in Scotland, 1,320 in Wales, and 730 patients were infected in Northern Ireland.
Five people were infected with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, causing brain damage. They all died.
The figures do not include people who were “indirectly infected” – such as a partner who caught HIV from a loved one who had been given contaminated blood or a blood product.
Statisticians said that it is not possible to estimate the numbers of hepatitis B virus infections with “reasonable accuracy”.
It’s been estimated that 3,000 people have died as a result of the infections, while others live with ongoing side effects of infection.