Infected blood scandal: The man who went to 70 funerals for friends - including his brother's

Suresh Vaghela was just 20-years-old and a few weeks into his first term at university in Birmingham when he was told he had HIV during a phone call. It was 1983.

The doctor told him to go home, tell his family and get his paperwork in order as he had only two or three months to live. 

Suresh, now 61-years-old, said he was given no information at all or support, instead being told not to tell anyone about his diagnosis. 

“Try and keep it low-key,” he said the doctor told him, “you don’t want to scare anybody, just manage it and don’t say anything, just manage it.”

Suresh, who now lives in Bushby near Leicester, and his older brother Praful was born with haemophilia. His classmates at school were told he was a “special boy” who they couldn’t play with or touch. 

It was during his time at college in Coventry, he was first given Factor VIII, the new revolutionary treatment. It was life-changing, instead of weeks recovering after a “bleed” the brothers could be back on their feet within hours. 

Suresh said: "It was the magic wand that changed our lives at the time, then we realised it changed it in a very drastic way.”

After his diagnosis, Suresh lived in fear and put his life on hold. He met his wife Rekha in 1988 and married the following year.

Doctors said he would only live a short time. There are not many pictures of Suresh from his 20s onwards. He stayed away from opportunities where his photograph would be taken. 

He said: "I didn’t want to be in any photographs, I didn’t want to be remembered. I wanted to be remembered for the good things a person does, not just for being alive.”

For decades, Suresh kept the secret about his diagnosis.

He said many from the haemophilic community were “brainwashed” into silence.

Praful, his brother died in 1995 from AIDS. In the year that followed Suresh went to 70 funerals of friends who died. He never felt he couldn’t openly grieve.

He said: "I couldn’t just open up, I didn’t have the strength, I didn’t have the courage."

Because of Suresh’s health problems, the couple were encouraged not to have children and a pregnancy was terminated, which Rekha, Suresh’s wife, said “shattered her soul”.

She said “We were coerced to terminate the child. I thought it was our doing, our choice because of Suresh’s health was 100 per cent.

"But when I listen to other statements from other women within our community, what she’s saying is what we were told and we had to terminate because they didn’t want another human being born to a disease."

Suresh continues to suffer from the effects of hepatitis and HIV.  In 2005, Suresh found out he was one of more than 800 people, who had been given a batch of Factor VIII which was infected with Variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (vCJD), an incurable brain disease. 

After decades of being told to protect others from knowing about his health and the rest of the years campaigning for the truth. The couple now want to focus on living.

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