Infected Blood – 50 years on victims still await justice

The worst treatment disaster in the NHS is still the subject of an inquiry half a century later with a compensation scheme not yet established for the victims of the infected blood scandal. Experts estimate that about 2,900 deaths from 1970 to 2019 were caused by patients being given unscreened blood contaminated with HIV and hepatitis, imported from the USA, from high-risk groups including prisoners and drug users. An inquiry was set up by Theresa May in 2018 to examine how it happened and whether there was a government cover up.

The medical background; By 1960 the life expectancy for a person with severe haemophilia was less than 20 years old. When Judith Pool, an American researcher, made a breakthrough in 1965 by isolating a vital factor V111 in blood which would revolutionize the treatment of haemophilia, it was hailed as a breakthrough. That was when the leading edge Uranus Pluto conjunction was in health-conscious Virgo – a time of many medical breakthroughs.   

  Then came AIDs in the early 1980s, with the first clinical case being reported on June 1981 on the Jupiter Saturn conjunction in Libra. That was just weeks before the July Solar Eclipse in the 1 North series which Bernadette Brady connects to relationship challenges and health issues.

By the mid-1980s, it was confirmed that HIV/AIDS could be transmitted through the use of blood and blood products, such as those used to treat hemophilia. Approximately half of the people with hemophilia in the US eventually became infected with HIV through contaminated blood products; thousands died. The overwhelming impact of HIV on the bleeding disorders community was felt into the next few decades.

  The hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection was also transmitted through contaminated factor products, pooled from the blood of hundreds of thousands of donors. Before testing for HCV began in 1992, an estimated 44% of all people with hemophilia had contracted it. With the advent of more sophisticated screening methods and purification techniques, the risk of contracting HCV through factor products is virtually nil.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3853992/

Most children born with haemophilia in the US today can look forward to long, healthy and active lives.

  The Infected Blood Inquiry was set up in the UK on 2 July 2018 when there was a Water Grand Trine of a Cancer Sun trine Jupiter trine Neptune with Sun opposition Saturn – caring, well-intentioned, can be overly-self-protective, not always realistic. But it also has a stubbornly determined and uncompromising Mars in Aquarius opposition North Node in Leo widely square Jupiter which might give hope that it will walk its own independent road and not give in to outside pressure. The chairman has already insisted on £100k interim payments to some 4000 individuals.  The end of the inquiry is flagged up by the Solar Arc Saturn now closing the opposition to the Sun to exact.

  There is also a Yod of Neptune sextile Pluto inconjunct Venus in Leo which if handled properly will produce a strong social goal and can be helpful for legal affairs. So its heart is probably in the right place. The Inquiry Venus will be rattled by tr Uranus in square on and off until spring 2024 – so the repercussions will roll on.

   There is no way of knowing whether it will be any better handled by the disastrous Post Office compensation scheme or even Windrush.  A mixture of inertia, gross incompetence and lack of motivation (or a gun at their head) may drag matters out – or not. The Inquiry chair Brian Longstaff, 30 April 1948, is not one to be pushed around – an excessively steady and Fixed Sun Taurus square Saturn Pluto in Leo and Mars in Leo – but he only issues his conclusions. Getting them acted on is another matter.