Victims of infected blood scandal continue to fight for compensation

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The results of the investigation stated that the victims had “not even but repeated” in the fight for compensation

People are reduced, re -traumatized and ignored in the last episode of horror in the infected blood scandal.

In the 1970s and early 1990s, around 30,000 people received contaminated blood. NHS patients received blood infected with HIV and hepatitis C, and it is estimated that 3,000 have already died.

They were poisoned by the state and had to spend precious decades for decades.

A pioneering victory on the investigation, which was completed in May 2024, was to be made up for the infected and their relatives.

The results of the investigation stated that the victims had “not even but repeatedly” failed and that the risk of virus infections in blood products had been known since 1948.

However, progress was so slow that Sir Brian Langstaff, chairman of the investigation, convened a two -day hearing on the compensation process this week.

Langstaff said he had the hearing because so many victims and activists had complained about the compensation.

The infected blood compensation authority is responsible for the termination of cash, but is still the vast majority of £ 11.8 billion.

In the meantime, the victims of the scandal die before they receive somewhat approximately justice.

Gary Webster was infected as a child with HIV and hepatitis C. He said: “You say you hope to pay all infected people by the end of 2027 and you hope to pay those affected by the end of 2029.

“Well, there are two people a week. You just have to do the sums yourself to find out that many people are not paid, the justice does not get and die without knowing what happened.”

Only 106 people received payments from the compensation authority, another 54 offers.

Many people were excluded from settlements due to close criteria and complex claims.

For example, Carolyn Challis was infected with hepatitis C when she received chemotherapy treatment. But because the blood was examined, she was refused to compensate.

“We feel by successive governments Gaslit, marginalized and abused [but] Obviously not, ”she said on Wednesday, on Wednesday.“ We suffer from persistent trauma. We shouldn't fight yet. We were repeatedly infected by the state that was infected
us.”

In the hearing, activists, victims and charity organizations who displaced the government due to change at a snail pace were.

Alan Burgess from a self -help group for hemophilic with HIV said that one of the problems was that the victims had to wait to be invited to apply for compensation.

“It's almost as if you are waiting for your lottery cards to appear,” he said. “And if it doesn't appear every month, you go down and you have to pull yourself up and then you are afraid because you may not live long enough to see that this compensation is coming through. I'm now 67 and what you do with our mental health is extraordinary.”

In truth, there is a reason why the government does not rush to the victims and their families.

Andrew Evans from the spoiled blood campaign said: “It is a long -time feeling that the governments want to pull out this scandal so that the less compensation has to die.”

“We were told that we had a comprehensive compensation with the promise that” whatever it costs to deliver the program that we will pay “. People report that they have become sick when the promise disappears.”

The government should urgently overthrow the payments to the victims. That activists have to fight so hard, and as long as a stain for every government that has come through this scandal and today still refuses justice.