Critical Findings of Lord Penrose
Although focused on the 8% of the population of the UK in Scotland Lord Penrose uncovers many critical findings with huge implications about the nature of the UK Cover Up of its hundreds of thousands of transfusion infections. These can be grouped under different headings but all point to a vastly larger group of victims and a vastly more infectious level than that admitted. Key findings include......
Although only 0.066% of UK donations had HCV in 1991 September, experts were saying this was a 90% reduction on previous levels of HCV transmission from the blood supply throughout the Seventies and Eighties
Penrose 3.235
Dr Hay emphasised that it was difficult to know the extent to which donor self-exclusion reduced the number of donors presenting a risk of transmission of infection, because HIV testing began shortly after the self-exclusion programme started. He proceeded on the basis that HIV testing and donor self-exclusion taken together reduced the number of high-risk donors giving blood.[238] He reported:
The condition appears to have been commoner in the USA than in Northern Europe. Contemporary studies suggest that the prevalence of non-A, non-B hepatitis in Northern European blood donors was approximately 0.4-1.0% in the early 1980s. In contrast, Contreras reported a much lower rate of infectivity of 0.085% per donor unit amongst 387 UK patients transfused an average of 3 units of blood each in 1987 and tested using an hepatitis C antibody ELISA. This suggests an approximately tenfold reduction in the risk of post-transfusion hepatitis C, in the UK during the course of the 1980s, following the introduction of donor self-exclusion and HIV testing ....[239
16.54
The prevalence of HCV infection in the blood donating population in both England and Scotland in the first six to 12 months after the introduction of screening was low, particularly in the case of repeat donors, among whom patients with higher risk factors had already been excluded by other means.
The Truth About Hep C .Org .UK states
"This means we have been pretending a 1991 figure of 0.066% of blood units for transfusions having HCV is the level forever, when in fact a 0.66% level is the actual one during the Seventies ans early Eighties. It is also a level which mirrors the one admitted across the EU and proven by actual blood tests when done on patients in the EU and UK.
A 0.66% per unit level of HCV from donors with transfusions averaging 4 units means transfusions were generally 2.6% infectiousness from 1970 to 1984, which in turn is mirrored by the levels in UK patients and also explains how 1% of the UK population was positive for HCV in 1986, when blood donor screening began properly.
Lord Penrose's findings all need to be accepted and applied to the whole UK and broadcast and acknowledged, leading to mass testing of the 1 to 2 million elder patients put at risk and unlocking the chance for testing to the millions from nations where the outbreak was worse.
Without this care our liver disease toll which has trebled in a decade of declining alcohol use since 2006 will continue at unprecedented levels. The cover up of this disasters magnitude, of the real "Industrial Scale" of NHS HCV infections is leaving hundreds of thousands of innocent patients from here and overseas in deadly ignorance."
Paul Desmond, Co ordinator of the Truth About Hep C and CEO of the Hepatitis B Trust comments,
"Ultimately people, doctors sworn to protect our health, have colluded to hide the fact that the greatest disaster in NHS history, is actually 20 times worse than admitted. They have destroyed crucial files, created bizarre guesstimates, ignored basic best practice and WHO guidelines to look good and appear excellent. When in fact millions of innocent patients had a simple right to be warned and tested for HCV. Is it right to believe a health service that can imagine its 1% HCV national population prevalence is maybe just 0.1%? Is it right to believe a health service claiming its transfusions were 10 times cleaner than the EU average when it refuses to test patients constantly presenting at 2% HCV infected? Every line of the Penrose Inquiry suggests not."
