"I want justice done": victims of tainted blood express themselves | News from the United Kingdom

The long-awaited investigation into the treatment of hemophiliacs who have been administered contaminated blood products is due to open Tuesday. Below, two victims of the scandal describe what happened to them.

Maria Fletcher

Fletcher has learned to live with the discomfort and medical intervention caused by beta-thalbademia, the blood disorder with which she was born. She needs transfusions every three weeks to supplement iron – containing proteins in red blood cells that carry oxygen around her body.

She was diagnosed with illness at the age of one year and underwent regular hospital visits during her school years. At the end of her studies, she obtained an internship with a cosmetics company.

At 21, however, she began to feel extremely tired. After a series of tests, she learned that she had contracted hepatitis C from the blood she had received.

"The film was not examined properly," she says. "They were donors living in England. I did not live as a normal person and that's largely because of hepatitis C. I was still working a little, but there were a lot of mental and physical side effects.

"The number of my white blood cells would go down and I had [temperature fluctuations] and chills. I had a very good job and I had to give it up. You can not continue a normal life at home and at work. "

Fletcher has not worked since the 90's. Her health has deteriorated and she is now an insulin-dependent diabetic suffering from heart problems caused by hepatitis infection. "Thalbademia was manageable, but when hepatitis C arrived, it was not. It was difficult to get treatment. When I moved to Leicester, I had to push to get the drug. "

She is married and does not have children. "[My health problems] It has been harder for me to get pregnant and get a mortgage, "she says. Now 50 years old, Fletcher suffers from cirrhosis of the liver and must undergo painful biopsies.

The stigma of hepatitis C was hard to bear. "You are always careful and frightened by what you can say," she says. "Many of my friends died of hepatitis C. All people who received a blood transfusion at that time should be examined. I want justice; I want the truth. They try to sweep it under the carpet. "

Fletcher will give his testimony to the investigation in June. "I have nothing to hide now. My family and friends know it, "she says.

Nicholas Sainsbury

Sainsbury was diagnosed at birth as suffering from hemophilia, an inherited disorder that prevents blood clotting. He was sent to a special boarding school, Treloar, Hampshire, which offered medical treatment to students on the spot.

While there, in the 1970s, he was given the factor 8, a protein from blood donations that helps with coagulation. It was only later that he realized that he was infected.

"We lost so many people," says Sainsbury. "Of the 55 students in my first year, more than 40 have died. Nobody died when I was there – it started from 1984-1985 ".

After school, Sainsbury worked as a civil servant and then in the land registry until his mid-thirties, when he became ill with multiple viral infections. He discovered that he had contracted HIV and hepatitis C as a result of transfusions and that he eventually had to quit his job: "It was too much of it. I was going to work bent double-edged, he said.

He had both knee joints and an ankle joint replaced. "It was very difficult to learn how to cope with hemophilia and to have two more strokes … There is a lot of anger because people think that health warnings have been ignored.

"A lot of the products were imported from the United States where the blood donation was paid. It was harvested from drug users, people on skid rows and prisoners. "

Now 55 years old and living near Hull, Sainsbury sent a witness statement to the investigation of infected blood. "In the first days, the fear of AIDS swept the whole country and was fueled by the media," he said.

"If you knew someone who had hemophilia, there was a chance they would be infected." I remember the advertisement about the gravestone and the press called it a "time bomb". We felt like seated targets. "