The British government “did not put patient safety first” when covering up a multi-decade-tainted blood scandal that resulted in thousands of deaths, according to a report released on Monday.
According to the 2,527-page final report by Justice Brian Justice Langstaff, a former judge on the High Court of England and Wales, Britain’s National Health Service used blood tainted with HIV and hepatitis on patients without their knowledge, resulting in 3,000 deaths and over 30,000 infections.
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Langstaff led a five-year inquiry into the use of contaminated blood and blood products in Britain’s healthcare system from 1970 to 1991.
The report accuses several administrations over time of deliberately exposing people to intolerable dangers.
Patients were exposed to a variety of treatments, including blood transfusions and receiving blood plasma or other blood products to treat disorders such as hemophilia.
Several times, health professionals lied about the dangers to patients. In others, patients were infected during the study without their knowledge or agreement, including children whose parents’ permission was not obtained.
Tainted blood and blood products originated in Britain but were also imported from the United States, frequently as hemophilia treatments.
Langstaff’s research discovered significant errors in donor screening, including the collection of blood from high-risk jails. The NHS allegedly provided false reassurances to patients in an effort to “save face,” failing victims “not once but repeatedly.”
The report also blames health officials for failing to follow suggestions and warnings about the need for more rigorous hepatitis testing, some of which were made years ago.
Langstaff concluded that the crisis might have been “largely, though not entirely, avoided.”
“Looking back and seeing how the NHS and government responded, the answer to the question ‘was there a cover-up?’ is yes.” Not in the sense of a few people arranging an orchestrated conspiracy to deceive, but in a more subtle, widespread, and terrifying manner. Langstaff remarked, “Much of the truth has been hidden to save face and expense.”
“Over decades, successive governments repeated paths of action that were false, defensive, and deceptive. Its continuous failure to conduct a public inquiry, combined with a protective mindset that refused to acknowledge that wrongdoing had occurred, left people without answers or justice. This has also meant that many chronically ill people have felt compelled to commit their time and energy to research and activism, often at great personal expense.”
On Monday, the British government launched a support phone line for people and families affected by the tainted blood scandal.
The report is not the first time a Western country has faced criticism for concealing a contaminated blood crisis.
The Krever Report, published in 1997 by Canada’s Commission of Inquiry on the Blood System, revealed that the federal government and health professionals were aware of the hazards of HIV and hepatitis transmission. During the 1970s and 1980s in Canada, around 8,000 people died, 30,000 were afflicted with hepatitis, and 2,000 became infected with HIV.
