Medical & Historical
They Buried Their Loved Ones. Now They Must Piece Together the Evidence.
They Buried Their Loved Ones. Now They Must Piece Together the Evidence.
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Medical & Historical
The medical and historical background to the infected blood scandal, including HIV, hepatitis, blood products, transfusions, treatment history and the evidence that explains how the disaster unfolded.
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Medical & Historical
IBCA Finally Acknowledges Missing Evidence — But What About the Families Left Behind?
A new IBCA policy recognises that some deceased victims' hepatitis C infections can be accepted without direct diagnostic evidence. But after decades of missing medical records, destroyed evidence and families fighting to establish the truth, serious questions remain. Why has this recognition taken so long, why are strict cut-off dates being applied, and what happens to the families who still fall outside the rules?
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Medical & Historical
HIV Was Not the End of the Story: What AIDS Progression Really Looked Like
For many people infected through contaminated blood, an HIV diagnosis was only the beginning. This article looks at what progression to AIDS could mean in real life — opportunistic infections, severe weight loss, cancers, repeated hospital admissions and profound physical decline.
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What Was the Infected Blood Scandal?
For decades, people across the UK were infected with HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C through contaminated blood and blood products provided through the NHS. The public inquiry that examined what happened found serious and largely avoidable failures across blood services, treatment, government and healthcare.
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Was Britain’s Infected Blood Scandal Really About American Blood?
The infected blood scandal is often described as Britain importing contaminated blood from America. But that shorthand can hide a much more complicated story involving plasma, clotting-factor concentrates, UK self-sufficiency failures and decisions taken here. We went back to the Infected Blood Inquiry evidence to separate the facts from the familiar narrative.
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When the Records Are Gone: What Hepatitis B and C Could Really Do
A look at what the medical evidence really says about hepatitis B and C — how often infection becomes chronic, the risks of serious liver disease, and what happens when families are asked to prove decades-old infections from incomplete or missing records.
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Dialysis, Hepatitis and the Patients History May Have Overlooked
For decades, hepatitis was recognised as a serious risk within British renal dialysis units. That history is documented in contemporary medical research.
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# The Forgotten Mothers: Anti\-D, Pooled Plasma and the Overlooked History of Risk
A special report from The Unheard Voice, on behalf of the infected blood community
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Britain’s Worst Treatment Disaster: The Infected Blood Scandal Everyone Should Know About
Today, we are going back through the history of the infected blood scandal—explaining what happened, who was harmed and why—to help ensure this national tragedy finally receives the public recognition it deserves.
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The Test That Came Too Late: Why Hepatitis B Must Never Be Treated as the “Lesser” Infection
Previously unseen medical records reveal that a haemophiliac infected through NHS treatment was not diagnosed with hepatitis B until routine testing in 1990. A later consultant’s letter said his notes suggested he had never previously been tested. Within two years, his records described chronic liver disease and a high risk of infectivity. By 1999, he had jaundice, portal hypertension and underlying cirrhosis. He died in January 2000, aged just 38. His records cannot tell us what earlier testing would ultimately have changed. But they expose why hepatitis B testing, monitoring and recognition matter—and why this infection must never be dismissed as minor simply because it can sometimes clear naturally.
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AZT and Interferon: How Does Compensation Recognise the Harm of Treatment?
People infected through NHS blood and blood products could face further suffering from the treatments they received. With clearer recognition now given to interferon, we examine how the scheme accounts for early HIV treatment—and whether it adequately recognises these different experiences, without placing one person’s suffering above another’s.
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