Infected Blood Inquiry: Daughter of victim speaks out

Campaigners, including Elieen Burkert, orginally from Queensbury, shared harrowing stories of how their lives have been blighted after they handed over the letter on Monday calling for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to expand the interim compensation scheme to cover more victims and their families.

The Infected Blood Inquiry was established in 2017 to examine how thousands of patients in the UK developed HIV and hepatitis C through contaminated blood products given in the 1970s and 1980s.

relatives of victims of the NHS infected blood scandal hand in a letter to 10 Downing Street pleading with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that action is needed now to set up a body to give full compensation (Image: PA)

About 2,900 people died in what has been labelled the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS.

Inquiry chairman Sir Brian Langstaff has said an interim compensation scheme should be widened so more people – including orphaned children and parents who lost children – could be compensated.

Sir Brian said in April he was taking the unusual step of making the recommendation ahead of the publication of the full report into the scandal so that victims would not face any more delays.

Under the initial scheme, only victims themselves or bereaved partners can receive an interim payment of around £100,000.

The inquiry has recommended the Government establish an arm’s-length compensation body now, and definitely before the final report is made in autumn.

The letter from relatives called for Sir Brian’s request to be acted on, saying: “This delay denies victims and their families any sense of tangible progress.

“Many continue to die without full redress, this cannot be right. The interim payment for deaths not yet recognised is critical.

“These payments are not just about compensation, they symbolise acknowledgement and they represent initial recognition of each life lost.”

Ms Burkert, 54, said her haemophiliac father Edward died in April 1992 after developing HIV and hepatitis C from contaminated blood products.

Ms Burkert said two uncles and three cousins, who also had the inherited bleeding disorder in which the blood does not clot properly, were infected from transfusions and died.

“We didn’t know that my dad had had HIV until the day he died,” she said.

“He was a single father of five – he was 54, the age I am now.

“When my dad died we just got no support. We left the hospital, we got nothing from anybody, nobody contacted us.

“Just left his five children without any support. Nobody came to us to give us any advice, no counselling.”

Ms Burkert added: “One of my younger brothers (Keith) took his own life eight years after my dad died and through talking to one of his key workers back in the day, I found out that he always feared that he may have got HIV.

“And we think that he took his life because he missed dad. I didn’t know how to console my brother because I was going through the same thing,” she said.

“It’s not just the impact on myself and my brothers and sisters, it literally contributed to my brother’s death because if you don’t have the support and the network around you, how can you deal with it… when your only parent has been taken by a disease like Aids, which was really, really stigmatised back in the day?”

“Right now I’m pretty angry because the first interim payment paid the infected, rightly so, and the widows and partners, rightly so, but why haven’t they recognised, so far, the deaths of people that have so far gone unrecognised?

“Like my dad was a single parent of five children – so why is my dad’s life worth less than anybody else’s?

“It is not the money; my dad’s life needs to be recognised,” Ms Burkert added.

Speaking on Tuesday, Paymaster General Jeremy Quin said “I absolutely get” that time is of the essence when questioned about the slow progress towards a compensation scheme for those affected by the NHS infected blood scandal.

Giving evidence to the Infected Blood Inquiry, he was asked to justify claims that the Government is working at pace on compensation, given that its commissioned report on the issue was published in June 2022 and a first meeting of a small ministerial group was held in February 2023.

Asked whether the Government understood that time is of the essence, the Cabinet Office minister said: “I absolutely believe it does. And I absolutely get it.

“It’s a scandal that shouldn’t have happened and I recognise that this is not just over weeks or months. It’s been decades which people have been waiting for redress.”