Contaminated Blood

Many people (especially in the 1980s) received donated blood infected with Hepatitis C and HIV. This contaminated blood scandal has been stated in the Commons as “one of the biggest treatment disasters in the history of the NHS” and a former health minister called the blood contamination scandal a “criminal cover-up on an industrial scale”. It is estimated that around 5,000 became infected with Hepatitis C (which can cause liver problems) and over a thousand were infected with HIV (it is unknown how many of these became AIDS sufferers.

 

Because of the level of scandal, the government did pay out some compensation, the average being around £60,000, however, this was for publicity, rather than legal reasons. One of the problems is that people may have received contaminated blood during a procedure and not know they even received it, being unconscious it seems is not a valid excuse. We would suggest that if there is the slightest chance you (or you are the executor for someone who has since died), received blood then it would be worth making a claim. If you are a descendent rather than the executor you can ask them to contact us to file a claim.

 

The onus would be on the NHS to defend, rather than for you to prove fault, as such there is little to lose. The first step would be to request a copy of your medical records from around 1980 to 1990, this can be done via your GP.

 

Who can claim compensation?

• The receiver of the blood;
• The executor of the estate if the receiver of the blood has passed away; or
• Secondary victims – family members who have been affected by the contaminated transfusion.

 

Time limits

Because of the nature of the situation, you may claim after the usual 3-year time limit. When deciding whether to proceed or not, the court will consider the interests of the claimant and defendant to reach a decision.

 

Because many of these blood recipients have now died it is impossible to precisely pinpoint numbers and there is the potential that they did not get infected from the blood itself but could have become infected years after in an unrelated incident. This argument about blame casts a grey shadow over the whole affair and makes determining blame extremely difficult. Such confusion is welcomed by the government who are paying compensation to victims or their families and can delay claims, usually for several years, this is a purposeful tactic to minimize their compensation costs. If you believe that someone has issues, or has died because of this negligence then please initiate a case and your caseworker will begin an investigation.

 

How we can help

In order to prove any fault, we would need to seek the assistance of a suitably qualified medical consultant. These consultants are privately contracted by us (and therefore their cost would be classed as a disbursement). To quantify the potential claim in regard to mental trauma we would suggest an additional report from our psychological team. We would hope that the other side would agree with our experts’ findings without any further costs or investigations and agree to a settlement.

 

To gain our assistance you need to open a case, this is done by taking advantage of our free consultation service, activated by the link at the top of the page, should you wish to start a case the caseworker will send you the suitable payment link. Please note your caseworker can only give generic advice, their role is to prepare your details for handling by our legal team and medical consultant and to act as your point of contact, they will also issue you with your Password and PIN, these will be needed to log onto your client dashboard. From your dashboard you will be able to manage and view every aspect of your case, upload documents, images, files etc.