Widow accuses doctors over donor blood risks - Guardian
Extract:
"The widow of a haemophiliac who contracted HIV through contaminated blood products given on the NHS has accused the government of ignoring warnings, leaving 5,000 people to be infected in a "wholly avoidable tragedy".
Sue Threakall, whose husband Bob died aged 47 in 1991, also accused doctors of ignoring the Hippocratic oath by treating patients without telling them of the risk of infection from HIV or hepatitis C.
She said doctors also failed to tell patients when they were being tested for HIV, and to tell them immediately if they tested positive. Her husband was not told for six months, despite doctors knowing the couple were having unprotected sex. Mrs Threakall said: "Warnings were ignored, lessons were not learned and our community was lied to by the people it should have trusted most."
Mrs Threakall, 54, a teacher from Barnstaple, Devon, was speaking on the first day of an independent public inquiry into the supply of contaminated blood plasma to haemophiliacs by the NHS in the 1970s and early 1980s."
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Sue Threakall, whose husband Bob died aged 47 in 1991, has accused the government of ignoring warnings, and doctors of ignoring the Hippocratic oath.
Posted by Willow at 11:18 pm
Labels: contaminated blood products, haemophilia patients, hepatitis C, HIV, NHS doctors, Sue Threakall, The Guardian
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