The defensive culture of public bodies must change to avoid future calamities. Emily Hohler reports
The Infected Blood Inquiry has finally come to an end following a five-year investigation. The Inquiry’s chair, Brian Langstaff, called the scandal, which resulted in thousands of Britons being infected with contaminated blood between 1970 and 1998, the “worst” in the history of the NHS and said that it could have been “largely” avoided. Almost 3,000 people are known to have died after contracting HIV or hepatitis, while a total of 30,000 were given contaminated blood. Langstaff’s 2,527-page report said the scandal was made worse by a “subtle, pervasive and chilling” cover-up, extending to both the government and the NHS, says Katy Balls in The Spectator. Langstaff, a former High Court judge, described the scale of suffering as “horrifying”.
The report found that doctors and civil servants “knew the risks” to those receiving blood transfusions, but “pretended not to”, says Isabel Hardman, also in The Spectator. Langstaff described a “defensive culture” in the NHS and civil service. Key documents were “destroyed” while civil servants “sought to mislead successive ministers with a ‘nothing to see here’ approach”. Health officials failed to ensure rigorous selection of blood donors to exclude high-risk donors, such as prisoners, or to block high-risk products from abroad, notes the Financial Times. “Sickeningly, doctors conducted research by using products on patients, including children, without gaining consent or informing them of the risks.” The “most shocking section” of the report is the case of Treloar College, which specialised in treating children with haemophilia, says Allison Pearson in The Telegraph. Here, the state school’s on-site NHS centre injected children with plasma blood products, despite clinicians being “well aware” of the risk. Only 30 of the 122 pupils are still alive.
A £10bn apology
“Britain’s recent history has been grimly punctuated by catastrophes” that have followed a similar template, says The Times. From the Hillsborough disaster to the Post Office scandal to the mothers and babies “killed and maimed in failing NHS maternity units”, almost all have been the “consequence of state incompetence, followed by obfuscation
