A HAEMOPHILIAC and campaigner has said he feels “horror” thinking he may have passed on hepatitis unwittingly after being turned “into potentially a vehicle that could cause death to a whole family”.
Bruce Norval was diagnosed with Hepatitis C aged 23 after being treated with contaminated blood for his bleeding disorder, the Infected Blood Inquiry heard yesterday. The Scots-born former nursing student, now in his mid-50s, criticised the public health response in the late 20th century, saying many medical practitioners viewed Hepatitis B and C “as if it’s a side-effect in isolation restricted to the patient”.
Referencing medical research from the late 1970s, Norval told the inquiry, sitting in London: “We’re not talking about a side-effect here, we’re talking about a virus in a living being. Someone who is sent back out into the community, unknowingly, to have sex with the person they love, to interact with their families, play football, maybe cut themselves in the workplace.
“One of the biggest horrors I feel as an individual is the thought I may have hurt someone I don’t know, that I might have passed the virus on to someone else without meaning to.
“We’re not talking about saving my life or saving my pain, we’re talking about turning me into potentially a vehicle that could cause death to a whole family.
Norval, who previously lived in Edinburgh and Inverness, said he moved from a small town to London around the mid 1980s “because of the bigotry associated with HIV and haemophilia”.
The inquiry is examining how thousands of patients were infected with HIV and Hepatitis C through contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 1980s. About 2400 people died in what has been labelled the worst treatment disaster in NHS history. Health Secretary Matt Hancock recently told the inquiry that if it recommends it, the Government would pay compensation to people affected.
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