By Jim ReedBBC PanoramaAll Sam Rushby can remember about his family are fleeting memories of hospital corridors and waiting rooms.In 1994, at just two years old, he lost his mum to Aids. His dad died with the condition a year later at Liverpool Royal Infirmary.His sister had also been infected with HIV, then a new and untreatable virus, and had died.”My family was literally torn apart and ripped away from me,” he tells BBC Panorama in his first-ever interview.”It just feels like they’ve been disposed of and that’s the end of it now.”Family photoSam’s father Gary was one of more than 1,200 people infected with HIV as part of the infected blood scandal, most after being given a drug made from US blood plasma in the late 1970s and 1980s.A long-running public inquiry into what has been called the worst treatment disaster in NHS history is preparing to report its findings.One of the key areas it is examining is whether the authorities were too slow to act at the time.Now, BBC Panorama has seen evidence that the British Embassy in Washington warned the UK government about the risk of Aids from contaminated blood in the early 1980s.An embassy official wrote a five-page memo to a senior figure at the Department of Health after meeting a member of the US Aids taskforce. The warning – one of several – came a decade before Sam was born. Infected Blood: Time for AnswersJim Reed meets the families of some of the children with bleeding disorders who were infected with HIV, to discuss their campaign for justice and what they hope for from the inquiry.Watch on BBC One at 20:00 BST on 13 May or on BBC iPlayer (UK Only) It wasn’t until he was in his teens that Sam, now 32, started to learn the truth.His father Gary was born with haemophilia, a genetic condition that damages the blood’s ability to clot. It almost always affects men, although women carry the haemophilia gene and can pass it on.In the late 1970s, Gary started on a new treatment meant to radically improve his life.Factor VIII was marketed as a wonder drug. Patients could simply take a bottle of the white powder from the fridge, mix it with distilled water and inject themselves.The bleeding would stop and, for the first time ever, haemophiliacs could live a more normal life.But those patients would later learn that entire batches of the new treatment had been contaminated with HIV and hepatitis C.About two-thirds of those infected with HIV in the 1980s developed Aids and died before modern antiretroviral drugs became available.Sam struggled to comprehend the truth about what happened to his family when he was finally told by his grandparents.”I didn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe it,” he says. “I just can’t get over, why did it have to happen?”In the early 1980s, the UK could not keep up with demand for Factor VIII, which was made by pooling – or mixing – the blood plasma of thousands of individual donors.Instead the treatment was shipped from the US.In the UK, blood donations have always been voluntary, but in the US, drug companies were allowed to pay cash for plasma.High risk groups, from prisoners to drug users, had a clear financial incentive to give blood and potentially lie about their medical history.Evidence uncovered by campaigners and seen by the ongoing public inquiry into the wider contaminated blood scandal shows that, as the risk from Aids started to become known, a series of clear warnings were sent to the UK government.In May 1983, Dr Spence Galbraith, the director of the UK’s Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre, wrote to Dr Ian Field, the senior principal medical officer at the Department of Health, urging that all US blood products should be withdrawn from use until the risk of Aids was “clarified”.The letter from the British embassy in Washington – which Panorama has now seen – was also sent to Dr Field, just a month later on 28 June 1983.In it, an embassy official describes a meeting with a representative from the US Centers for Disease Control’s Aids taskforce.The transmission of HIV in blood was discussed, he writes. Haemophiliacs were “m …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnBy Jim ReedBBC PanoramaAll Sam Rushby can remember about his family are fleeting memories of hospital corridors and waiting rooms.In 1994, at just two years old, he lost his mum to Aids. His dad died with the condition a year later at Liverpool Royal Infirmary.His sister had also been infected with HIV, then a new and untreatable virus, and had died.”My family was literally torn apart and ripped away from me,” he tells BBC Panorama in his first-ever interview.”It just feels like they’ve been disposed of and that’s the end of it now.”Family photoSam’s father Gary was one of more than 1,200 people infected with HIV as part of the infected blood scandal, most after being given a drug made from US blood plasma in the late 1970s and 1980s.A long-running public inquiry into what has been called the worst treatment disaster in NHS history is preparing to report its findings.One of the key areas it is examining is whether the authorities were too slow to act at the time.Now, BBC Panorama has seen evidence that the British Embassy in Washington warned the UK government about the risk of Aids from contaminated blood in the early 1980s.An embassy official wrote a five-page memo to a senior figure at the Department of Health after meeting a member of the US Aids taskforce. The warning – one of several – came a decade before Sam was born. Infected Blood: Time for AnswersJim Reed meets the families of some of the children with bleeding disorders who were infected with HIV, to discuss their campaign for justice and what they hope for from the inquiry.Watch on BBC One at 20:00 BST on 13 May or on BBC iPlayer (UK Only) It wasn’t until he was in his teens that Sam, now 32, started to learn the truth.His father Gary was born with haemophilia, a genetic condition that damages the blood’s ability to clot. It almost always affects men, although women carry the haemophilia gene and can pass it on.In the late 1970s, Gary started on a new treatment meant to radically improve his life.Factor VIII was marketed as a wonder drug. Patients could simply take a bottle of the white powder from the fridge, mix it with distilled water and inject themselves.The bleeding would stop and, for the first time ever, haemophiliacs could live a more normal life.But those patients would later learn that entire batches of the new treatment had been contaminated with HIV and hepatitis C.About two-thirds of those infected with HIV in the 1980s developed Aids and died before modern antiretroviral drugs became available.Sam struggled to comprehend the truth about what happened to his family when he was finally told by his grandparents.”I didn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe it,” he says. “I just can’t get over, why did it have to happen?”In the early 1980s, the UK could not keep up with demand for Factor VIII, which was made by pooling – or mixing – the blood plasma of thousands of individual donors.Instead the treatment was shipped from the US.In the UK, blood donations have always been voluntary, but in the US, drug companies were allowed to pay cash for plasma.High risk groups, from prisoners to drug users, had a clear financial incentive to give blood and potentially lie about their medical history.Evidence uncovered by campaigners and seen by the ongoing public inquiry into the wider contaminated blood scandal shows that, as the risk from Aids started to become known, a series of clear warnings were sent to the UK government.In May 1983, Dr Spence Galbraith, the director of the UK’s Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre, wrote to Dr Ian Field, the senior principal medical officer at the Department of Health, urging that all US blood products should be withdrawn from use until the risk of Aids was “clarified”.The letter from the British embassy in Washington – which Panorama has now seen – was also sent to Dr Field, just a month later on 28 June 1983.In it, an embassy official describes a meeting with a representative from the US Centers for Disease Control’s Aids taskforce.The transmission of HIV in blood was discussed, he writes. Haemophiliacs were “m …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
