Colin Smith was just 10 months old when he contracted HIV after receiving contaminated blood. The injustice his family faced only continued when he died of AIDS at the age of 7. A recent BBC investigation has found that the doctor who gave Colin infected imported blood product Factor VIII, Prof Arthur Bloom, broke his own rules to do so. Just three months earlier, Prof Bloom’s own department had written internal NHS guidelines discouraging the use of imported blood treatments on children because of the risk of infection.
Colin was being treated for haemophilia, a rare condition that affects the blood’s ability to clot, and was one of over 3,000 people in the UK to die after being given infected blood products. Colin’s parents, Janet and Colin from Newport, have fought for over 40 years for answers and hope the infected blood inquiry, which is due to report findings next month, will provide a measure of closure.
In January 1982, over a year before Prof Bloom first treated Colin, he co-wrote a letter to all haemophilia centers urging them to give new heat-treated products to patients that would aim to destroy viruses. Just three months later, Prof Bloom ignored his own rules when treating Colin. Colin was infected with HIV and hepatitis C in August 1983 after being given blood products imported from the US.
Colin’s parents have fought not only for answers, but for their son’s story to be heard, hoping to expose the dangerous practices and policies that led to his tragic death. Communication of diagnoses in the 1980s, alongside stigma and discrimination towards people with HIV and AIDS were common and only added to the family’s struggles. Janet and Colin only learned of their son’s hepatitis C diagnosis years after his passing
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