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: The wonder drug is poisoned

The wonder drug is poisoned

BBC Radio 4 - Blood Matters, The wonder drug is poisoned

Haemophilia patients learn they’ve been given blood products infected with HIV.

After being given a brand-new American product to treat their bleeds, young haemophilia sufferers are told the grim news – that some of them have been infected with HIV.

In the 1970s and 80s, doctors in the UK began treating patients who were suffering from haemophilia with a new blood product, which could be administered more conveniently than previous treatments. 

The new Factor VIII product was imported from the US and required the pooled blood plasma of a very large group of blood donors. But that meant that any infectious disease that a single donor carried, could immediately contaminate the whole batch. 

In the second episode of her series, the broadcaster and writer Blanche Girouard speaks to a former pupil at the Lord Mayor Treloar School in Alton, Hampshire, where boys with haemophilia were regularly treated with American Factor VIII. More than 120 boys became infected with HIV and hepatitis through contaminated batches of the blood product - more than 70 have since died.


Producer: Mike Lanchin 
Researcher: Ewan Newbigging-Lister 
Editor: Kristine Pommert
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The wonder drug is poisoned

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