A blood-borne disease is a disease that can be spread through contamination by blood and other body fluids. Blood can contain pathogens of various types, chief among which are microorganisms, like bacteria and parasites, and non-living infectious agents such as viruses. Three blood-borne pathogens in particular, all viruses, are cited as of primary concern to health workers by the CDC-NIOSH: HIV, hepatitis B (HVB), & hepatitis C (HVC).
Health Management Associates is a defunct Arkansas-based company involved in a blood-management scandal during the 1980s.
In the 1980s, between one and two thousand haemophilia patients in Japan contracted HIV via contaminated blood products. Controversy centered on the continued use of non-heat-treated blood products after the development of heat treatments that prevented the spread of infection. Some high-ranking officials in the Ministry of Health and Welfare, executives of the manufacturing company and a leading doctor in the field of haemophilia study were charged for involuntary manslaughter.
The tainted blood disaster, or the tainted blood scandal, was a Canadian public health crisis in the 1980s in which thousands of people were exposed to HIV and hepatitis C through contaminated blood products. It became apparent that inadequately-screened blood, often coming from high-risk populations, was entering the system through blood transfusions. It is now considered to be the largest single (preventable) public health disaster in the history of Canada.
Kelly Duda is an American filmmaker and activist from Arkansas best known for the 2005 documentary, Factor 8: The Arkansas Prison Blood Scandal.
Contaminated hemophilia blood products were a serious public health problem in the late 1970s up to 1985.
The Lindsay Tribunal was set up in Ireland in 1999 to investigate the infection of haemophiliacs with HIV and Hepatitis C from contaminated blood products supplied by the Blood Transfusion Service Board.
In April 1991, the doctor and journalist Anne-Marie Casteret published an article in the French weekly magazine the L'Événement du jeudi showing that the Centre National de Transfusion Sanguine knowingly distributed blood products contaminated with HIV to haemophiliacs in 1984 and 1985, leading to an outbreak of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C in numerous countries. It is estimated that 6,000 to 10,000 haemophiliacs were infected in the United States alone. In France, 4,700 people were infected, and over 300 died. Other impacted countries include Canada, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Portugal, and the United Kingdom.
Treloar School and College is a non-maintained residential and day special school and college for disabled children and young people, aged from 2 to 25 in Holybourne near Alton, Hampshire, UK.
From the 1970s to the early 1990s, tens of thousands of people were infected with hepatitis C and HIV as a result of receiving infected blood or infected clotting factor products in the United Kingdom. Many of the products were imported from the United States, and distributed to patients by the National Health Service. Most recipients had haemophilia or had received a blood transfusion following childbirth or surgery. It has been estimated that more than 30,000 patients received contaminated blood, resulting in the deaths of at least 3,000 people. In July 2017, Prime Minister Theresa May announced an independent public inquiry into the scandal, for which she was widely praised as successive governments going back to the 1980s had refused such an inquiry. May stated that "the victims and their families who have suffered so much pain and hardship deserve answers as to how this could possibly have happened." The final report was published in seven volumes on 20 May 2024, concluding that the scandal could have been largely avoided, patients were knowingly exposed to "unacceptable risks", and that doctors, the government and NHS tried to cover up what happened by "hiding the truth".
Patrick McGuire is a Scottish solicitor and solicitor advocate. He is a partner with personal injury law firm Thompsons Solicitors Scotland.
The Penrose Inquiry was the public inquiry into hepatitis C and HIV infections from NHS Scotland treatment with blood and blood products such as factor VIII, often used by people with haemophilia. The event is often called the Tainted Blood Scandal or Contaminated Blood Scandal.
Arthur Leslie Bloom (1930–1992) was a Welsh physician focused on the field of Haemophilia.
Charles Rocco Carmine Rizza FRCPEd was a British consultant physician who specialised in haematology.
R (March) v Secretary of State for Health was a 2010 judicial review which challenged the UK Department of Health's decision not to implement Recommendation 6(h) of the Archer Independent Inquiry. The case was important in developing the doctrine of error of fact in public law which previously had not readily been the subject of judicial intervention.
The Advisory Committee on the Virological Safety of Blood, often abbreviated to ACVSB, was a committee formed in March 1989 in the United Kingdom to devise policy and advise ministers and the Department of Health on the safety of blood with respect to viral infections. The scope of the ACVSB concerned areas of significant policy for the whole of the United Kingdom and operated under the terms of reference: "To advise the Health Departments of the UK on measures to ensure the virological safety of blood, whilst maintaining adequate supplies of appropriate quality for both immediate use and for plasma processing." Of particular emphasis to the remit was the testing of blood donors using surrogate markers for Non-A Non-B hepatitis (NANBH) and later on, HCV-screening of blood donors.
The HIV Haemophilia Litigation [1990] 41 BMLR 171, [1990] 140 NLJR 1349 (CA), [1989] E N. 2111, also known as AMcG002, and HHL, was a legal claim by 962 plaintiffs, mainly haemophiliacs, who were infected with HIV as a result of having been treated with blood products in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The first central defendants were the then Department of Health, with other defendants being the Licensing Authority of the time, (MCA), the CSM, the CBLA, and the regional health authorities of England and Wales. In total, there were 220 defendants in the action.
In 1994, the Irish Blood Transfusion Service Board (BTSB) informed the Minister for Health that a blood product they had distributed in 1977 for the treatment of pregnant mothers had been contaminated with the hepatitis C virus. Following a report by an expert group, it was discovered that the BTSB had produced and distributed a second infected batch in 1991. The Government established a Tribunal of Inquiry to establish the facts of the case and also agreed to establish a tribunal for the compensation of victims but seemed to frustrate and delay the applications of these, in some cases terminally, ill women.
The Irish Haemophilia Society (IHS) is an organization that represents the interests of people with haemophilia, von Willebrand disease and other inherited bleeding disorders.
Elaine DePrince was an American author, hemophilia activist, teacher, and advocate of adoptive parenting. The mother of 11 children, she is best known as the adoptive mother of ballet star Michaela DePrince and the co-author of her memoir, Taking Flight: From War Orphan to Star Ballerina (2014). She was interviewed in the 2011 documentary First Position, discussing the racism they encountered as Michaela pursued training in classical ballet. She was also the author of Cry Bloody Murder: A Tale of Tainted Blood (1997), which tells the story of her family's ordeal after their three hemophiliac sons were infected with HIV/AIDS in the 1980s. In the book, DePrince holds pharmaceutical companies, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Hemophilia Foundation responsible for failing to ensure the safety of blood plasma products.
