Val White still carries the weight of guilt about her son Martin. When Martin was seven years old, Val gave him blood clotting injections that had later been contaminated with HIV. Martin, who had haemophilia, had no idea that the treatment his mother was administering would eventually lead to his death. Now, over two decades since Martin’s passing at the age of 33, Val says “it destroyed his life. A lot of it is guilt – guilt that I wished I’d done more. Guilt that I gave him the injection – it was me that administered it.”
This Monday, the public inquiry report on the NHS’ biggest treatment disaster will be released. It will focus on whether Martin’s death could have been prevented. Martin was diagnosed with haemophilia at just 13 months old, a rare genetic condition making his blood unable to clot properly. When he was seven, he began using Factor 8, a blood clotting treatment made from the plasma of tens of thousands of donors mainly imported from the United States of America. It was discovered that if even one donor was carrying a virus, the entire batch would be contaminated. Unfortunately, Factor 8 was routinely used for haemophilia treatment in the UK by the late 1970s. The result of this was over 30,000 people across the United Kingdom, including 400 people in Wales, were infected with HIV and Hepatitis C.
Martin suffered greatly, both physically and mentally, due to the treatment he was given. Val’s guilty thoughts escalated when she left her role as a nurse auxiliary at the Cardiff hospital where Martin was treated by Professor Arthur Bloom. Val recalls “… at the time when Rock Hudson died (from Aids) and the pictures were in the paper of him and I kept thinking ‘what will Martin look like when it’s his end? In the end, it just took over.”
Lynne Kelly, Chair of Haemophilia Wales, stated many surviving patients and relatives would travel to London for the Sir Brian Langstaff final report’s publication on Monday. Criticism is expected about how the situation in Wales was dealt with, “Wales seemed to be forgotten, and people left to get on with it without support.” The scandal pre-dates devolution, but the Wales Office was influential.
The scandal led to over 30,000 people in the UK being infected with HIV and Hepatitis C after being given contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 1980s. The two main groups of NHS patients affected were haemophiliacs, and those who were given contaminated blood transfusions after childbirth, surgery, or other medical procedures between 1970 and 1991. It is believed that approximately 2,900 people have since died as a result of the scandal
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