Thousands of people contracted HIV after NHS imported infected blood to save cash – and now those responsible could be brought to justice
JASON EVANS has one abiding image of the beloved dad he lost when he was just four.
The campaigner, now 27, told The Sun: “The first memory I have is of him dying in his parents’ house on my birthday.”
Jonathan Evans was 31 when he died in 1993 after being infected with HIV by contaminated blood products that had been used to treat his haemophilia.
And now, finally, Jason believes those who let the infected blood destroy families like his throughout the Seventies and Eighties may be brought to justice.
He and other campaigners were last night celebrating after the Prime Minister announced a full public inquiry into how thousands of people were infected with HIV or hepatitis C from tainted blood. So far, 2,400 of them have died.
It could lead to criminal charges if the probe shows that patients were knowingly given blood products containing deadly diseases.
Jason, from Coventry, has spent much of the past year in the National Archives, digging up old documents relating to the horror.
He has sent out more than 100 Freedom of Information requests.
He declared: “People will be going to jail based on the evidence I have seen.
“It was a personal thing to do this for my dad at the start. But now it is much bigger.”
Meanwhile Andy Evans, 40 — a haemophiliac who was contaminated with HIV aged five — said: “What happened here is tantamount to murder.
“In France and Japan people have been locked up on counts of manslaughter for similar scandals. There has been a conspiracy to cover this up.”
Most of the 7,500 people infected with the blood products used by the NHS are haemophiliacs, whose blood does not clot properly.
To help, they are given products which until 1986 were made by pooling blood concentrates from thousands of donors.
Only one donor to the batch of concentrate needed to be infected for ALL the patients to be at risk.
And campaigners say to save money, the Department of Health imported blood taken from drug- addicted US prisoners, Russian corpses and areas of Africa where there was already an Aids epidemic.
They now hope that both former Health Secretary Ken Clarke and England’s former chief medical officer Dr Diana Walford will be called to answer questions.
Documents from 1981 show Dr Walford, then a senior health official, attended a meeting where virologist Dr John Craske warned there was a “high risk” of patients contracting hepatitis from these products. Yet they were not withdrawn for another five years.
These documents were first discovered by Jason Evans in the National Archives.
In 1983 Mr Clarke, then Minister of State for Health, told fellow MPs there was “no conclusive evidence” that Aids was transmitted by the products.
But there had already been warnings to the-then Department of Health and Social Security that all blood products donated in the US after 1978 should be withdrawn because of the Aids risk.
Web developer Andy, of Evesham, Worcs, claimed: “Information is coming out which will show ministers were to blame.
Kenneth Clarke has questions to answer.” In a statement last night Mr Clarke denied he had been the minister responsible for blood products and insisted he had not been called to previous, less extensive inquiries because of his “fringe involvement”.
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Labour MP Diana Johnson has been campaigning on the issue for the past seven years and alleged yesterday: “There is evidence of criminal actions.
“People have been coming forward with evidence of medical records being tampered with, of documents around contaminated blood being removed.”
And Sue Threakall, whose haemophiliac husband Bob died in 1991 at 47 after being infected with HIV, insisted: “There’s been a criminal cover-up on an industrial scale.
“A trusted source told us that one person, who was asked to sign the Official Secrets Act, was placed in a room with acres of documents to destroy.
Meanwhile Andy, infected at five, warns that the Government is still repeating the mistakes of the past.
He fears that fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) — the human form of mad cow disease — is being passed to haemophiliacs right now.
Andy claimed: “I don’t think even now they are always using the safest products in the NHS.
“They are reluctant to use the fullest tests for CJD because it is more expensive. Lessons have still not been learned.”
Rare risk
HAEMOPHILIA is a rare genetic disorder which causes bruising and excessive bleeding from cuts because the body lacks the protein which helps blood to clot.
It mainly affects men although women can carry the affected gene.
Six thousand people in the UK suffer from the condition.
There is no cure but it can be treated to prevent prolonged bleeding.
These days the genetically engineered clotting medicines given to patients are safe.