Children are told in ‘groups of five’ if they were infected with HIV at a blood-infected school, then sent back to class

The much-anticipated report into the infected blood scandal has detailed how tens of thousands of people were let down by the NHS and other institutions after trusting them.

More than 30,000 people were infected with HIV and hepatitis C while receiving NHS care between the 1970s and 1990s, in the biggest treatment scandal in the history of the NHS.

Although the health services are at the center of the affair, they are not the only ones to bear responsibility for having contributed to the deaths of some 3,000 people who received infected blood products.

Treloar School, a Hampshire school for disabled children and young people, which provided specialist treatment for boys with haemophilia, is also accused of culpability. These boys will then be used as “research objects”, according to the investigation report, and “very few of them will escape infection”.

Between 1970 and 1987, several students at the boarding school received treatment for haemophilia at an on-site NHS center while continuing their studies, but it was later discovered that many of them had been treated with plasma blood products infected with hepatitis and HIV. .

The report highlights the “consternation and distress” caused in many cases by the fact that GPs, receptionists, nurses and even school principals and pharmaceutical companies were informed of diagnoses before the patients themselves .

Students sent back to class after learning they were HIV positive

A particularly chilling detail from the 2,527-page report is how some students were herded into “groups of five” and told “you did it, you didn’t do it”, while staff told them if they had been infected with a deadly disease.

The fact that these boys were then told to return to class rather than home, to their parents or to a counselor, is described in the report as “appalling.”

He condemns the behavior of the late Dr. Anthony Aronstam, former director of the school’s hemophilia center, who allegedly “downplayed the risks of hepatitis and AIDS.”

“There was no consistent practice of telling individuals that they had been infected with HIV,” the report continues. “Some were never informed by the school and were only informed by their family doctor. Others were informed in a group.”

It details how staff would go around a room saying “yes, no, yes, no” to indicate who was HIV positive, adding that if children were first informed at school that they had tested positive, their parents were not present and there was no one. no “structured facility” of support afterward, adding that there was “very little evidence of professional psychological counseling.”

Only 30 of 122 hemophiliac students survived

“A significant percentage (probably around 70%) of the students with hemophilia who attended Treloar School died as a result of their infection,” the report said.

“Among those who were students in the early 1980s, a large majority were infected with HIV; and very few, whether they had HIV or not, avoided becoming infected with hepatitis.”

The few surviving former students included in the school’s trials said “consistently” that the increased risks from the blood products they were given “were not explained” and that there was “no meaningful consultation” with their parents or with them.

Students treated as “research subjects”

The report highlights how boys at the school – then known as Lord Mayor Treloar College – were treated as “research subjects” whose safety and wellbeing were placed behind the outcomes sought by clinicians.

He says research is a “fundamental part” of the hemophilia center’s activities, for reasons that are “not difficult to understand.”

As Dr. Rosemary Biggs, a central figure in hemophilia care, noted: “The school’s set of 49 hemophilia patients” presented a “unique opportunity to study the disease.”

The research at Treloar – which merged with a girls’ school in 1978 to become coeducational – was “unprecedented elsewhere” – but the report said “informed consent for participation was neither sought nor given”.

Boys at the school were unnecessarily treated with multiple commercial concentrates known to carry higher infection risks, rather than being offered safer alternative treatments.

Among the products tested was Factor 8, a drug extracted from blood plasma, much of which was imported from the United States and made from blood purchased from prisoners, drug addicts, sex workers and other high-risk groups.

The report, written by the inquiry’s chairman, Sir Brian Langstaff, found there was “no doubt” that healthcare professionals at Treloar were aware of the risks of contracting viruses from these products.

Sir Brian adds: “Not only was this a prerequisite for the research, a fundamental aspect of Treloar, but knowledge of the risks is displayed in what clinicians wrote at the time.

“Students were often seen as objects of research, rather than as children whose treatment should be resolutely focused on their individual interests alone. This was unethical and wrong.

School hopes bereaved families can find comfort

In a statement released on Monday, Rishi Sunak offered a “sincere and unequivocal” apology to the victims of the NHS’s biggest treatment disaster, promising that “global” compensation will be paid “whatever it takes”.

The boys at the school were just one example of thousands of victims who received tainted blood, with the report claiming it was a “chilling” cover-up, with evidence from Ministry of Health documents Health marked for destruction in 1993.

In a statement, Treloar School and College said the report “shows the full extent of this horrific national scandal” while laying bare the “systemic failure” at its heart.

“We are devastated that some of our former students have been so tragically affected and hope that the results will bring some comfort to them and their families,” it read.

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