May beordrar utredning av blodskandal – 2 400 dog

The tainted blood scandal is the issue of around 4,670 British haemophiliacs being infected with hepatitis C; 1,243 were also infected with HIV, "co-infected" by both viruses, through using contaminated clotting factor products, supplied by the National Health Service (NHS) in the 1970s and 1980s and the subsequent government and corporate reaction. At least 2,400 were killed by the tainted blood and many others are terminally ill.. Of the 1,243 haemophiliacs who were infected with both hepatitis C and HIV, less than 250 remain alive as of 2017. It is commonly misreported by the media that these treatments were "blood transfusions", using images of surgical blood transfusions and blood packs. In fact, the factor was a processed pharmaceutical product. The infections were principally due to the plasma product Factor VIII, a medicinal product that was sourced from the US and elsewhere. The creation of such products involved dangerous manufacturing processes. Large groups of donors were used (as many as 60,000 per batch); it only took one infected donor to contaminate an entire batch, which would then infect all of the people that received that material. In contrast this was at a time when the practice of paying donors for whole blood in the US had effectively ceased; the UK did not import whole blood from the US or other countries, it did however import large quantities of Factor VIII given to haemophiliacs (see Factor 8: The Arkansas Prison Blood Scandal). The reason the UK imported products from overseas was that it had did produce enough of its own Factor VIII. No government, health or pharmaceutical entity in the UK has admitted liability for the scandal and no damages have been paid to those infected or affected. Compensation has been paid in Ireland. In November 2016 a motion in the House of Commons was passed stating "That this House recognises that the contaminated blood scandal was one of the biggest treatment disasters in the history of the NHS, which devastated thousands of lives". In January 2017 the Welsh Assembly passed a motion calling on the UK Government to hold a full public inquiry into the scandal. In April 2017, former MP and health secretary Andy Burnham described the scandal as a "criminal cover-up on an industrial scale", he secured an adjournment debate on the subject, which he used to present what he described as evidence of criminal acts. On 10 May 2017 the BBC broadcast an episode of its "Panorama" series titled "Contaminated Blood:The Search for the Truth" which was watched by 2 million viewers and received widespread press coverage reporting that one of the victims sons was now taking legal action. On 28 May the Sunday Express reported that there was new evidence supporting the "cover-up" theory. This centred around MP Diana Johnson being told by the DoH that a key piece of evidence she had asked for was likely destroyed, when in fact a campaigner found the document just a few weeks later. In July 2017, Prime Minister Theresa May announced that there would be an inquiry into the scandal.