A decades-long UK scandal in which thousands of people died after being treated with infected blood was covered up and largely could have been avoided, according to a bombshell report published Monday.
\nMore than 30,000 people were infected with viruses such as HIV and hepatitis after being given contaminated blood in Britain between the 1970s and early 1990s, the Infected Blood Inquiry concluded.
\nVictims included those needing blood transfusions for accidents and in surgery, and those suffering from blood disorders such as haemophilia who were treated with donated blood plasma products.
\nSome 3,000 of them died, and more will follow, in what has been described as the biggest treatment disaster in the eight-decade history of the state-run National Health Service (NHS).
\nIn some instances, children with bleeding disorders were treated as \u201cobjects for research\u201d. Many went on to develop and die from HIV and hepatitis.
\nThe long-awaited report, running to more than 2,500 pages, laid bare a \u201ccatalogue of failures\u201d with \u201ccatastrophic\u201d consequences for victims and their loved ones.
\n\u201cI have to report that it could largely, though not entirely, have been avoided,\u201d concluded its author, judge Brian Langstaff.
\nHis team found that successive governments and health professionals failed to mitigate risks despite it being apparent by the early 1980s that the cause of AIDS could be transmitted by blood.
\nBlood donors were not screened properly and blood products were imported from abroad, including from the United States where drug users and prisoners were used for donations.
\nToo many transfusions were also given when they were not necessarily needed, the report added.
\nThere were even attempts to conceal the scandal, including evidence that officials in the health department destroyed documents in 1993.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A decades-long UK scandal in which thousands of people died after being treated with infected blood was covered up and largely could have been avoided, according to a bombshell report published Monday. More than 30,000 people were infected with viruses such as HIV and hepatitis after being given contaminated blood in Britain between the 1970s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22508"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22513,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22508\/revisions\/22513"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}