Hepatitis report is handed to prosecutor

By Auslan Cramb, Scotland Correspondent
(Filed: 24/04/2003)
 

Prosecutors are to examine complaints that hundreds of Scots haemophiliacs contracted hepatitis C from infected NHS blood products.

A police report was handed to the Crown Office in Edinburgh yesterday, after a long campaign by 500 haemophiliacs who were contaminated with blood-borne viruses, including HIV, more than 20 years ago.

If the Crown Office decides on a full investigation, it could lead to doctors who were involved being questioned.

By the late 1980s, every haemophiliac in Scotland had been infected with hepatitis C, although the health service has maintained that the incidents were accidental, and the patients have received no compensation.

The sufferers claim the NHS should have paid more attention to evidence that a clotting agent, Factor 8, produced from untreated donors' blood, was unsafe.

Similar investigations into blood product contamination in Canada, France and Japan have led to senior health staff and ministers facing trial.

Although more than 500 people are registered with the Scottish Centre for Infection and Environmental Health, some estimates suggest the number infected in Scotland by blood products or transfusions could be 4,000.

Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish National Party's shadow health minister, said: "It is an outrage that the sufferers still have not received compensation because the London government continues to try to block payments."

	18 January 2003: Blood case patients 'unable to get medical records'
	7 November 2002: Hepatitis victims forced to wait for compensation
	3 October 2001: Blood victims 'should get money'