Britain announced on Tuesday (May 21) that victims of the contaminated blood scandal will receive interim compensation payments worth £210,000 ($267,000) each.
The scheme to pay ‘comprehensive compensation’ will ideally be operative by the end of the year.
The total cost of the scheme is estimated at more than 10 billion pounds ($12.7 billion).
John Glen, the British Paymaster General acknowledged that people were “still dying each week from infections” and might fear that they would not live to receive compensation.
Subsequently, Glen said that before the full scheme’s establishment, interim payments would be made to living infected beneficiaries within 90 days, starting in the summer “so that they can reach those who need it so urgently most”.
Additionally, Minister John Glen told the UK parliament that the government will establish the ‘Infected Blood Compensation Authority’ under interim chair Robert Francis, a senior lawyer, to supervise the compensation scheme.
The announcement comes a day after a bombshell report blamed the National Health Service (NHS) and successive governments for failures that resulted in more than 3,000 deaths.
Who will be eligible for the compensation?
Those eligible for interim payments include living-infected beneficiaries, people registered with existing support schemes, those who register with the support scheme before the final compensation scheme becomes operational, and the estates of those who pass away between now and payments being made.
Those who have been infected or affected as a consequence of the scandal are eligible for the final compensation scheme.
This would include people who have been directly or indirectly infected by NHS blood, blood products or tissue contaminated with HIV or hepatitis C or have developed a chronic infection from blood contaminated with hepatitis B.
Where an infected person has died but would have been eligible under these criteria, compensation will be paid to their estate.
As per the Infected Blood Inquiry, more than 30,000 people in the United Kingdom were infected with viruses like hepatitis and HIV after they were transfused the tainted blood between the 1970s and early 1990s.
Compensation scheme open to families and friends of victims
Glen added that under the main compensation scheme, relatives and friends of victims would also be able to claim compensation.
“When a person with an eligible infection has been accepted onto the scheme, their affected loved ones will be able to apply for compensation in their own right,” Glen said.
“That means partners, parents, siblings, children, and friends and family who have acted as carers of those who were infected are all eligible to claim,” he added,
The compensation payments will not be taxable.
In his statement, John Glen said full details of the compensation scheme will be published on the government’s website on Tuesday.
He confirmed there will be a wide-ranging debate in the House of Commons next month on the findings of the Infected Blood Inquiry.
What did the Infected Blood Inquiry’s report reveal?
The 2,500-page damning report released on Monday (May 20) laid bare a ‘catalogue of failures’ with ‘catastrophic’ consequences for those who became victims of the scandal.
It found that 30,000 haemophiliacs or transfusion recipients, who were infected with HIV and/or hepatitis C over more than two decades could ‘largely, though not entirely, have been avoided’.
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As per the report, blood donors were not properly screened and the officials imported blood products from abroad, including the United States where they used drug users and prisoners for donations.
This is said to be the biggest treatment disaster in the state-run National Health Service’s (NHS) history.
Attempts were also made to conceal the scandal which also included evidence that the health department officials destroyed documents in 1993.
(With inputs from agencies)