Police probe tainted blood claims

Strathclyde police have confirmed that they are conducting an investigation into claims that doctors knowingly gave patients in Scotland blood which could have been contaminated.

Hundreds of patients in Scotland were infected with life-threatening Hepatitis C, and in some cases HIV, through blood transfusions and clotting agents in the 1970s and 80s.

A senior detective is to investigate allegations that the medical profession, government officials and companies should have done more to protect patients from the blood supplies.

Haemophiliacs in Scotland have long argued that the medical profession acted recklessly when they prescribed blood clotting agents.

Screening measures

They were the largest patient group affected by the blood products.

Hepatitis C is a virus which attacks the liver and it is most common in Scotland amongst drug users who have shared needles. It can also be sexually transmitted.

It is estimated that about 500 Scots contracted the liver disease from blood transfusions and blood treatments before screening measures were adopted in the early 1990s.

Doctors say that the blood clotting agents were a revolutionary treatment, available at a time when HIV and Hepatitis C had not been identified as viruses.

They claim that they could not have known the dangers.

However there have already criminal investigations in Canada, France and Japan, and an inquiry in Ireland resulted in payments of thousand of pounds for every patient.

Haemophiliacs in Scotland are still fighting for compensation.