CAMPAIGNERS hope they are “closer to the truth” on the NHS infected blood scandal after fresh evidence from a Scots medic.
Professor Christopher Ludlam, consultant haematologist and reference centre director at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh from 1980 to 2011, appeared remotely before the UK-wide Infected Blood Inquiry last week.
Three other clinicians who treated haemophilia patients in Glasgow at the time of the scandal will give evidence as it continues this week – Dr Anna Pettigrew, Professor Ian Hann and Professor Gordon Lowe.
Some haemophiliac patients did not find out whether they were HIV positive until more than two years after receiving infected blood products, the inquiry heard last week.
Sixteen people were found to have the virus in October 1984 after Ludlam sent samples from patients to be checked – without telling them.
But it was not until December that year before medics called a meeting to advise patients that some of them might have been infected with HIV – and it was then left to them to ask if they had tested positive or not.
Jenni Richards QC asked Ludlam: “There were two patients who after two years still didn’t know their results because they had not responded to any invitation to proactively contact the centre and a very small number of patients declined to know the result?”
He replied that was correct and said the two people who had not asked for their results found out at the end of January 1986, or very early in January 1987.
The Infected Blood Inquiry, which began in September 2018, is examining how as many as 30,000 people across the UK – including around 3000 in Scotland – were infected with HIV and hepatitis through contaminated blood products imported from the US in the 1970s and 1980s. Thousands have since died.
Lynn Fraser, associate at Thompsons Solicitors, who is representing the victims, said it had been a “rollercoaster week” for clients.
She added: “At the end of a gruelling week of evidence, I am left in no doubt that we are closer to the truth.”
Dan Farthing, CEO of Haemophilia Scotland, said the Inquiry has now heard two very different interpretations of the situation in Edinburgh, with a “stark contrast” between evidence given by affected witnesses last summer and Ludlam’s version of events.
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