Blood service collected donations from UK prisons despite infection risk warnings, documents to inquiry show
Documents submitted to the Infected Blood Inquiry reveal the blood service in the UK was taking donations from British prisons up until the late 1980s, despite warnings to end the practice.
It is evidence of how unsafe, by today’s standards, the UK blood supply was until the early 1990s when testing for life-threatening viruses like hepatitis C and HIV became available.
Much of the inquiry has focused on haemophiliacs, the group harmed most in the infection scandal due to blood products imported from the US made from contaminated blood from paying donors including those in jail.
But the vast majority of people infected with hepatitis C in the UK acquired their infection via blood transfusions in the NHS for things like routine surgery, cancer treatment or following childbirth.
Blood given to this silent majority in the infected blood scandal was sourced almost exclusively from donors in Britain.
“I felt so guilty I passed it on,” says Daphne Whitehorn.
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She contracted hepatitis C from a blood transfusion she received during a kidney transplant in 1971.
“But I didn’t know I could pass it on because I was never told anything about it,” she says.
Daphne Whitehorn
Her daughter Janice tested positive for the virus in 2019, probably infected when she was born. Neither knew they had the infection for decades.
Symptoms can be mild at first, many people naturally clear the virus and treatments introduced in the last decade can cure most people of their infection without serious side-effects.
But chronic infection can cause severe liver damage, liver failure and liver cancer.
The Whitehorns and thousands of other victims of the scandal are looking to the Infected Blood Inquiry for answers.
Key among them, why so many people were infected with hepatitis C.
There are no precise numbers, many of the records of donors, recipients and procedures have been lost or destroyed.
But statistical experts for the inquiry estimate around 27,000 people may have been infected with hepatitis C via transfusions. Most have subsequently died of other causes but they calculate around 1,600 have died so far from causes related directly to their hepatitis C infection.
The inquiry has heard how more could have been done to keep viruses like hepatitis out of the blood supply.
Janice Whitehorn tested positive for the virus in 2019
Documents show how calls to end the practice of taking donations from the prison population were slow to be heeded.
The inquiry was shown evidence that in 1973 rates of hepatitis viruses were found to be fives times higher in prisoners than the general population.
While this led to many regional blood services to stop taking donations from prisons, others continued. The last prison donation took place in 1987.
But the inquiry is expected to consider far wider failings too.
Like why, when testing for HIV for and then Hepatitis C became available, was the blood service slow to adopt using them. Also why infected frozen stocks of blood taken before Hepatitis C testing was introduced were not retrospectively tested before being given to patients in the early 1990s.
In addition, victims of the scandal want to know why it took four years for the Department of Health to approve a “look-back” exercise to identify those who may have been infected due to a blood transfusion. Also why that exercise left so many still unaware they had been infected.
A photo wall of victims of the scandal
“We’re very sorry for the parts that we played in the past,” says Dr Gail Miflin, chief medical officer of the NHS Blood and Transplant Service.
“Listening to the stories of those infected and affected, they are dreadful stories.
“My job as chief medical officer is to ensure that the blood supply today is safe and that people who need a transfusion today, get blood that comes from one of the safest blood services in the world.”
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And much has changed.
Donors today are screened for lifestyle factors and travel history that might have put them at risk of blood-borne infections.
Each donation is also tested for a number of infections including HIV and hepatitis C, and a sample of each donation is archived for three years in case re-testing is required.
The Infected Blood Inquiry is due to publish its final report on 20 May.
If you think you may have been at risk of hepatitis C infection, free testing is available in England: https://hepctest.nhs.uk/ in Wales: https://www.shwales.online/wales-sti-testing-kit-test-and-post.html In Scotland you will need to speak to your GP.
The crash involving a cargo ship and oil tanker off the East Yorkshire coast is bad news for the sea, fish and air in the area. What we don’t know yet is quite how bad it will be.
That depends on a few things – but the speed of the collision, clouds of filthy black smoke from the fires and the leaked fuel are certainly worrying.
Firstly, it matters what was on board those two massive vessels.
Follow live: Jet fuel spilling into sea after tanker collision
Analytics firm Vortexa estimates the 183m-long tanker was carrying about 130,000 barrels of jet fuel (kerosene), which is now leaking into the sea.
Jet fuel is not as sticky or viscous as heavier types of oil, thankfully, so it’s less likely to clog the feathers and fur of birds and seals. It can also be broken down by natural bacteria.
But it can still poison fish and kill animals and plants on the shoreline if it makes its way into the soil there.
The Marine Conservation Society has pointed out the site in the Humber estuary is close to some protected areas and is important for seabirds and harbour porpoises.
And both ships will have been powered by a dirtier, heavier kind of oil – likely marine gas oil or heavy fuel oil, though we don’t know the details yet.
Heavy fuel oil is nasty stuff.
Pic: Bartek Smialek/PA
Cheap, thick and tar-like, it can smother animals and is very dangerous if they consume it, and is extremely difficult to clean up. Let’s hope this isn’t creeping around the North Sea already.
We don’t know how much of either the jet fuel or the oil powering the ships has leaked, or how much will be burned off in the violent fires – which themselves are ploughing black smoke and filthy air pollution into the surrounding atmosphere.
And we don’t know for sure what was on the Solong cargo ship and if, or what, will go into the sea.
Cargo ship ‘had sodium cyanide on board’
It was carrying 15 containers of sodium cyanide among other cargo, according to a report from maritime data provider Lloyd’s List Intelligence.
The container vessel was also transporting an unknown quantity of alcohol, said the casualty report – an assessment of incidents at sea – citing a message from the local coastguard.
Plastic takes hundreds of years to break down, and potentially can choke or trap animals.
Many of us have seen that uncomfortable viral video of a turtle having a straw yanked out of its nose. Previous accidents on cargo ships have seen plastic Lego pieces wash up in Cornwall 25 years later.
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Secondly, the impact depends on the sea and weather conditions around it.
Things like the wind and currents affect how an oil spill spreads in the sea. Scientists can draw up computer models to simulate how the oil could behave.
Thirdly, it matters how quickly this is all tackled and then cleaned up, if necessary, and if it can be.
Usually the slower the response, the worse the impact.
The coastguard has said the incident “remains ongoing” and it has started assessing the “likely counter pollution response” that will be required.
Such a response might need the help of numerous public bodies: the government environment department, the transport department, the Environment Agency and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.
So for now the best we can hope for – aside from the welfare of the people involved – is that not all the oil is spilled or burnt, that conditions are calm and that rescuers and those cleaning up can work swiftly.
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