Blood Matters

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Factual: Health & Wellbeing

Blanche Girouard explores the UK's contaminated blood scandal of the 1970s and 1980s.

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Blood Matters: Left behind

Left behind

BBC Radio 4 - Blood Matters, Left behind

Lauren Palmer lost both her parents because of infected blood products, when she was nine.

Lauren Palmer’s whole world fell apart when both her parents died because of HIV-infected blood products in 1993. She was just nine years old.

Both of Lauren Palmer’s parents died of Aids in August 1993. Her father, who suffered from severe haemophilia, had been infected with the HIV virus through contaminated Factor VIII blood products when he was a boy. He'd passed the virus on to his wife.

Following her parents’ death, Lauren was sent to live with relatives and told not to talk about what had happened to her family. At the time, she says, Aids was “a death sentence, a dirty disease". 

In the final episode of her series Blood Matters, ahead of the publication later this year of the final report of the Infected Blood Inquiry, the writer and broadcaster Blanche Girouard speaks to Lauren about losing her family, friends and home in one fell swoop. She tells Blanche why she has joined the campaign calling on the government to give full compensation to those who lost a parent or parents, or a child, because of contaminated Factor VIII clotting products.



Producer: Mike Lanchin 
Editor: Kristine Pommert
Researcher: Ewan Newbigging-Lister 
A CTVC production for BBC Radio 4

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