By James Rush
A mother-of-two with a life-threatening illness will find out this week whether doctors are to continue a trial drug test which could add years to her life.
Lesley Jenkins, 49, of Wibsey, Bradford, discovered in 2007 that she had contracted hepatitis C in a blood transfusion after she gave birth to her son in 1985.
The symptoms began to emerge after about 20 years, but it took a further four years for doctors to diagnose the problem.
After the standard treatment for hepatitis C failed, Mrs Jenkins embarked on a trial for the drug Telapravir and in February she started travelling to London every week to take part in the trial.
Mrs Jenkins (pictured) will not find out whether she has been on the drug or a placebo until January, but on Thursday she will travel to the capital so doctors can assess whether she has improved – and if not, the trial could be cancelled.
She said: “I’m getting quite stressed about it I have to say, because the drug trial is my last port of call – if this doesn’t work there’s nowhere else for me to go.
“It is showing the best results so it is sort of the front runner for treating hepatitis C, anything else behind it is going to be four or five years away.
“Now I probably won’t live that long to see that.”
Mrs Jenkins, who gave up her business due to ill-health, campaigns for compensation for people who contracted hepatitis C through blood transfusions in the 1980s and early 1990s.
She said the Government plans to review the situation in 2014, by which time the people who contracted the disease through blood transfusions before 1991 may have died.
She said: “The financial impact of this has decimated my family and I don’t get any help from the Government – I even have to pay for my own prescriptions.
“Nobody deserves to get hepatitis C but it’s not like I lived a risky lifestyle – somebody gave me blood that was infected.”
The Hepatitis C Trust recently released a report which said research showed 70 per cent of Strategic Health Authorities in England were failing to oversee the Government’s strategy to tackle hepatitis C1, leaving infection rates of the deadly virus to increase, allowing the disease to spiral out of control.
A further study shows SHAs ignoring NICE guidance with just 29 per cent of diagnosed patients being treated across the country – less than half of the 60 per cent NICE recommends.
Telegraph and Argos
