Posted: 25-Sep-2006 << BACK
Bringing people together - Halifax Today
PO Box 13421,
Moseley,
Birmingham.
Did you know that in the United Kingdom you have around 400 times more chance of having been infected with HIV by your Government than you have of winning the National Lottery? And almost 5,000 times more chance of having been given hepatitis C?
In the late 1970s and 1980s 4,800 British haemophiliacs and many more others were infected with hepatitis C through their NHS treatment. More than 1,200 of those people were also infected with HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS. Of those 1,200, more than 800 people have already died. Hundreds more have died from hepatitis C. People are still dying.
To this day the British Government has steadfastly refused to hold a public inquiry into this tragedy. Against overwhelming evidence no fault has ever been admitted by either Government or the pharmaceutical companies who supplied the contaminated blood products.
Those living with these horrendous infections, those loved ones who have themselves become infected through victims of this disaster, and the families of those who have died, still have no answers. There are still no guarantees that lessons have been learned.
Now we discover that there are up to 400 more people than previously thought who have been infected with HIV through blood products and who may not know that they carry the virus. The survivors may be out there unwittingly infecting others.
This month sees the launch of Taintedblood, a new group set up to bring people together who have been affected by this disaster. We are all affected ourselves. Our aims are to achieve a full, independent public inquiry into contaminated blood in the UK so that we might finally give some answers as to how and why this happened to the thousands of bereaved families and to those few of us that still survive.
We will not rest until we have achieved this but we need your readers' help to do it. We need to get the word out to people to contact us. As part of the launch we will be taking part in a media awareness event to highlight both our launch and the UK premiere showing of Kelly Duda's film Factor 8: The Arkasas Prison Blood Scandal at the Raindance Film Festival on September 29 in London. This shocking film describes how bad blood was sourced from US prison blood farms and then shipped across the world, including to Britain. We are asking as many people to turn up to the event as possible so that we may show our strength in numbers and would urge anyone interested in attending to contact us for details.
We have waited 25 long years for justice. We will wait no longer.
The Taintedblood Team22 September 2006
