Sky Views: Contaminated blood is hidden, silent slaughter
Tuesday 25 September 2018 05:48, UK
Paul Kelso, health correspondent
The contaminated blood scandal is the biggest unresolved public failing in post-war Britain.
Yet for years it has been a horror hidden in plain sight, the dead, the dying and their families let down by the failure of the political and institutional establishment.
The deaths of 3,000 people would not be tolerated in war. Yet because it happened in the NHS, though infection with HIV and hepatitis C, the injustice was ignored for decades.
The same instinct for denial and delay that obstructed justice for the victims of Hillsborough, and ignored warnings at Grenfell Tower, contributed to the horror of contaminated blood.
This was not one disaster but thousands of personal tragedies, the victims largely unseen and unheard.
There is no tower block or football terrace to remind us of what happened, but this week the victims have at last been given a focal point for their anger, grief and regret.
The first act of the public inquiry chaired by Sir Brian Langstaff was to stage a commemoration of the infected and affected, alive and dead.
The toll was clear among the audience of more than 500 people at Church House in Westminster. Many of the victims are men because haemophilia predominantly affects males. They walked with sticks, and some were in wheelchairs.
Most were well into middle age and they are the lucky ones, as was from the searing testimony of survivors.
People like Tony Feruggia, taken into care when he was 12 because his father, a haemophiliac, had contracted HIV and was dead within two years. Both his uncles suffered the same fate and Tony lived for years with the stigma of AIDS.
The same instinct for denial and delay that obstructed justice for the victims of Hillsborough, and ignored warnings at Grenfell Tower contributed to the horror of contaminated blood.
People like Michelle Tolley, who was given hepatitis C in a transfusion that saved her life during childbirth, but condemned her to 28 years unaware what was making her ill.
And people like Stuart McClean, given hepatitis C when he misdiagnosed with haemophilia aged eight, who described his treatment as akin to manslaughter.
The opening put the victims at the heart of the inquiry, but it and sets a high bar for Sir Brian to meet their demands for justice.
Campaigners now want him to go beyond grand gestures and focus on the institutional and personal errors that saw the NHS harm so many people.
There are calls for ministers and even prime ministers to give evidence. Sir Brian said he will not flinch from compelling them if required, but the deadliest scandal may also require the longest inquiry.
There are twice as many "core participants" - people or institutions with a direct interest - in the infected blood inquiry as there are in the sprawling child abuse probe, and it is expected to take at least two years to complete.
Many more people will die while it runs its course.
But if it does its job the individual horrors of contaminated blood will finally be acknowledged for what they are: a hidden, silent, avoidable slaughter.
Sky Views is a series of comment pieces by Paste BN editors and correspondents, published every morning.
Previously on Sky Views: Cat killer case shows our love for pets