Infected blood survivor demands: 'No more platitudes, we need to hear answers'

It's no exaggeration to say for many of the people affected by the infected blood scandal, Monday will be a defining day in their lives.

That's the day they are going to hear the findings from Sir Brian Langstaff's far-reaching review into how thousands of people in the UK were given infected blood products.

Many of them, like Ros Cooper who I met at her mother Juliet's home in Worcestershire, have been campaigning for the truth for decades.

Ros was infected with contaminated blood products as a child, to tackle a rare bleeding disorder called Von Willebrand disease.

She found out those blood products had infected her with hepatitis C aged 19 but doesn't know when exactly she was infected as her medical notes have been lost.

That diagnosis has impacted her whole life. She lived in fear of an early death, planning her funeral in her early 20s and telling me that there was never a plan or goal to her life as she never expected to live for long enough to need one.

The treatment to rid her of hepatitis ruined her health, leaving her unable to work, and unable to have children.

And she feels guilt that she is alive, when so many friends she has met through support groups are not.

Yet through all this, Ros and her mother have been campaigning and fighting for the truth.

Doing that, Ros says, is like another thing she has had to battle: "I was infected with contaminated blood, that was then in my body until I had treatment that then wrecked my body and my mind.

"So I had the virus that was then irradiated by the treatment, that was then in there doing all the damage.

"And then you’ve got this fight.

"This trying to be heard...and you’re kind of carrying that, it’s almost another infection, another thing."

The pair have accrued thousands of documents in their quest for what exactly caused the blood scandal, and who knew what and when.

Some letters date back to 1975, and show that even then the risks between the blood and infection was known.

Other documents show that some patients were given contaminated blood as a test to see what impact they would have.

Standing looking at the documents in their dining room, it isn't hard to see why this has been called 'worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS.'

That is what Sir Brian Langstaff has been looking into since 2018, and Ros and Juliet hope the publishing of his report on Monday will be the beginning of the end of their fight.

They want to hear the truth, even though they know it won't necessarily be easy. And after the truth they want proper compensation, and a heartfelt apology.

The government has said they accept the "moral case" for compensation and interim payouts of £100,000 have already been made to about 4,000 victims and bereaved partners.

But Ros says that they need more than this: "What we need is for the state to actually accept, recognise and acknowledge what did go wrong rather than saying 'we did the best at the time and because we think morally we should do something, we'll do something'.

"It is actually about saying, 'We got this monumentally wrong, the fact that this is the worst treatment disaster in the NHS and actually it’s down to what we did, what previous administrations did.

"That needs to be admitted and acknowledged, people need to stand up and say, from the heart how sorry they are about that."

Ros adds the recommendations Sir Brian Langstaff made to widen the compensation scheme to include orphaned children and bereaved parents must be actioned as, until everyone is treated fairly then she won't be able to move on.

And moving on is what Ros wants to do, and quite frankly what she deserves to do. Aged 50 she feels she doesn't really know who she is without the fight for justice.

As her Mum puts it "I think of all the things I could have been doing, and Ros could have been doing, but I've spent all the time doing all this other stuff.'

"It's time they were able to stop 'other stuff' and start living."

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