A heartbroken family have shared the last conversation they had with their son who tragically died of Aids after he became a victim of the contaminated blood scandal....CONTINUE READING
Colin Smith, was riddled with HIV and hepatitis C in 1983 after he was given contaminated blood whilst being treated for haemophilia at 10 months old. He sadly died in 1990, aged just 7, after he received infected blood products that were imported from the US.
His family, from Newport, have opened up 34 years on from the tragedy and shared his final four words. Colin turned to his father in pain and said: “I can’t see daddy”. His loved ones bravely shared his last words ahead of a BBC investigation about the severity of the scandal.
The investigation found that the doctor who botched his blood, Prof Arthur Bloom, broke his own guidelines to infect him. It has been reported that just three months before Colin’s blood was contaminated, Prof Bloom’s department had written internal NHS guidelines aimed at child patients.
Campaigners are waiting for the report to be published in May.
According to the rules, staff were steered away from using imported blood treatments on kids over the fears of infection.
Colin’s father told the BBC: “This wasn’t an accident. It could have been avoided.” Around 30,000 people in the UK were administered blood transfusions infected with hepatitis C or HIV, between 1970 and the early 1990s. Out of this estimate, at least 2,400 people died, while over 4,000 survivors continue to battle with the effects of the scandal.
The Infected Blood Inquiry, which is due to publish its final report in May, made its final recommendations on compensation for victims and their loved ones in April 2023. Inquiry chair Sir Brian Langstaff said at the time that he “could not in conscience add to the decades-long delays” victims had already faced.
Some people have already received interim payments of £100,000, but Sir Brian said that a number have gone “unrecognised” – including parents who lost children and children orphaned when their parents died – as he called for the interim scheme to be extended.
Infected blood victims and campaigners have been waiting for the final inquiry report.
The seven-year-old’s parents believed that their son received the blood product, Factor VIII, with the aim that it would destroy viruses. Colin’s father, who is also called Colin, told the BBC: “They were playing Russian roulette with people’s lives, and they miscalculated and killed thousands.”
His mother, Janet, said they were given the devastating news about what was wrong with him whilst standing in a hospital corridor.
Janet said that the doctor never explained to them that it was a “death sentence”. Speaking about the agonising moment, she said: “Colin was lying in bed, not well at all, and Prof Bloom stops in the corridor and just said ‘he’s HIV’.
The family were then hit with outcry from the community, who questioned how they could keep Colin in the same house as his siblings. One day, they even woke up with ‘Aids dead’ written on the side of their home. “We were known as the Aids family,” Janet explained.
“We’d have phone calls 12, one o’clock in the morning. ‘How can you let him sleep with his brothers? He should be locked up, he should be put on an island’… he was three..<<CONTINUE READING>>
