LONDON (AP) — Thousands of people in Britain who contracted HIV or hepatitis from transfusions of tainted blood in the 1970s and 1980s will receive 100,000 pounds ($120,000) in compensation, the UK government said Wednesday.
Survivors welcomed the payment, which came after years of campaigning, but said it should be expanded to include more people whose lives were blighted by the scandal.
The payment will be made by October to survivors and bereaved partners of the dead but not to other family members, such as parents or children. A decision on compensation for them is not expected until a public inquiry concludes next year.
“The parents feel so disheartened and despondent that they can’t get recognition,” said Rosemary Calder, whose 25-year-old son Nicky received an infected blood product and died in 1999 with HIV. Calder said the approved payments were “a step in the right direction, but there’s a long way to go.”
Thousands of hemophiliacs and other hospital patients in Britain were infected with HIV or Hepatitis C through tainted blood products, largely imported from the United States. Some 2,400 people have died as a result of the scandal, which has been called the worst treatment disaster in the history of Britain’s health care system.
The contaminated blood was linked to supplies of a clotting agent called Factor VIII, which British health services bought from the U.S. Some of the plasma used to make the blood products was traced to high-risk donors, including prison inmates, who were paid to give blood samples.