A FATHER of two has told how his world turned upside down after he found out he had been infected with hepatitis C from tainted blood.
Kevin Goddard was one of nearly 5,000 patients with haemophilia exposed to the virus in the 1970s and 1980s.
Of these, more than 1,200 were also infected with HIV.
Almost 2,000 of those people have since died as a result.
Since then, Mr Goddard and thousands of others have been battling for compensation and are now calling on the government to implement Lord Archer’s recommendations, raised two weeks ago.
“I am being told my hepatitis C is dormant but it could recur at any time,” said Mr Goddard, who has also been warned he could be at risk of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
“You live life as normally as possible but you think about it everyday, it’s there when you go to bed at night and when you wake up in the morning.”
Mr Goddard, of Well Street, Ryde, was diagnosed with haemophilia, a rare inherited bleeding disorder in which the blood does not clot normally, at the age of eight.
There is no cure but the condition can be managed using a clotting chemical.
From 1973, some blood products containing such treatment were imported from America as British suppliers could not keep pace with demand.
A two-year, independent, privately funded inquiry, led by Lord Archer of Sandwell, found much of the blood had come from donors whose risk of hepatitis C and HIV was much higher than that of the general population.
Mr Goddard, who received eight treatments, only found out he had hepatitis C in 1993.
“I was really angry, my whole world turned upside down and I just felt so isolated,” he said.
“If 2,000 people dropped down dead in Ryde High Street there would be national mourning. If thousands of fish died in a contaminated river there would be an inquiry. Because we are spread out across the country we have been forgotten about,” added Mr Goddard.
What the report said:
• Lord Archer recommended a government-administered and backed compensation scheme for those who were affected — money currently available to victims comes from charitable trusts.
• To improve the treatment and management of haemophilia, the inquiry called for a committee of specialists to be set up to act as official advisers to ministers.
• Lord Archer’s report suggested UK authorities had been slow to react but accepted it was hard to directly apportion blame.
• An online petition has been set up at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/contaminated calling for the government to take swift action and implement Lord Archer’s recommendations.
Reporter: martinn@iwcpmail.co.uk