Posted: 9-Mar-2006 << BACK
Blood death: Familys 'whitewash claim
Chris Bishop 01 March 2006 - Reproduced by permission of the Eastern Daily Press
A review into how National Health Service blood supplies became infected with hepatitis was last night branded a whitewash by the family of a 47-year-old businessman who became a shadow of his former self before dying of the disease.
Stuart Oliver, of Friday Bridge, near Wisbech, died of chronic liver disease in January 2005, months after being diagnosed with the C strain of the virus. Doctors believe he was given infected blood during emergency surgery at Peterborough General Hospital after a car crash in 1987. The following year, hepatitis C was discovered and from 1991 blood supplies were screened for the disease. But Mr Oliver and thousands of other people were never warned they could have become infected and many never found out until it was too late.
An NHS review into the crisis, published yesterday, concludes that no one was to blame. Public health minister Caroline Flint said: "We have great sympathy for those people, and their families, who were infected with hepatitis C from contaminated blood products in the 1970s and early '80s. The review based on the available evidence concludes that clinicians acted in the best interest of their patients in the light of the evidence available at the time. Donor screening for hepatitis C was introduced in the UK in 1991 and the development of this test marked a major advance in technology, which could not have been implemented before this time."
The NHS review did not examine the so-called Look Back campaign, which set out to trace those most at risk of contracting hepatitis C. As an EDP investigation revealed three weeks ago, health chiefs did not contact everyone who had a transplant, to warn them they were at risk. Instead the NHS waited until screening revealed an infected donor, and only those given that person's blood were contacted.
Last night Mr Oliver's daughter Kerry said: "It's a whitewash. The whole thing was completely flawed. As a family, we're not going to stop until we get adequate answers, we will not be palmed off, we will not stop fighting until we get answers to why the NHS failed to inform people that they were at risk. Why didn't they just send everyone who'd had a transfusion or a blood product a letter saying 'get yourself tested - there's a small chance that you may be infected. When they did this Look Back, they must have known all these people were infected. We only found out the real details of Look Back when the EDP researched it. Even I can see it's flawed."
Yesterday, the NHS said its review focused on documents from 1973 to 1991 to produce a chronology of events and analysis of the key decisions which were taken at that time.
Its conclusions include:
Nobody acted wrongly in the light of the facts that were available to them at the time;
The more serious consequences of hepatitis C only became apparent in 1989 and the development of reliable tests for its recognition in 1991;
Tests to devise a procedure to make the hepatitis C virus inactive were developed and introduced as soon as practicable.
North East Cambridgeshire MP Malcolm Moss wrote to Caroline Flint about the case of Mr Oliver. "I am sorry Mr Oliver was not identified as part of the Look Back exercise," she replied. Unfortunately Look Back was unable to identify all patients who may have been infected."
In 2004, as Mr Oliver and his family came to terms with the fact he had weeks to live, the NHS launched an information campaign warning people who had transfusions prior to 1991 they could be at risk.
Campaigners believe 200,000 or more people could have become infected with a disease whose symptoms can take 20 years or more to show.
