Infected Blood Inquiry details failure after failure

The final report of the UK Infected Blood Inquiry exposes the catastrophic failings that devastated lives through transfusion transmitted HIV and hepatitis viruses.1 Other countries completed similar inquiries over 20 years earlier,23 and Brian Langstaff, the inquiry’s chair, condemned deliberate delays by successive governments that effectively silenced more than 30 000 people. By the time the inquiry was finally commissioned in 2017, almost 3000 people had already died of illnesses caused by infected blood and blood products.4

Failure to invest in domestic production of factor VIII in the 1970s is one of the many ways in which patients were failed.5 Of those infected with HIV, 1250 had the clotting factor VIII deficiency haemophilia A6 and were infected by imported factor VIII concentrates made from blood from high risk donors, such as drug users and prison inmates. Most patients with factor IX deficiency—haemophilia B—were treated with UK produced concentrates and remained HIV negative, but many became infected with hepatitis C. At that time, 1 in 1500 UK donors had this yet to be identified virus.7

The report was …