Hep C victims’ payout U-turn

A GROUP of experts is to consider compensation payments for all patients who contracted hepatitis C through routine surgery, the health minister announced yesterday, signalling a further shift in the Scottish executive’s policy on victims of the disease.

Malcolm Chisholm said the group will examine hepatitis C infection through blood and blood products and is expected to recommend within six months whether a system of compensation should be made available for victims.

But sufferers, who have been pressing the executive for two years for compensation, warned that many people who contracted the liver disease will die before a decision is reached.

Up to 500 Scots are estimated to have contracted the disease from blood transfusions and blood treatments before the virus was identified and screening measures were introduced to combat it in 1991.

Bruce Norville, the chairman of the Manor House Group, a haemophiliacs’ support network, said: "I hope that we will all still be alive when a decision is finally made, but I know that there are some people who won’t."

Mr Chisholm said the "door was still open" to compensation payments, despite rejecting a unanimous decision by the parliament’s health committee that financial support should be offered immediately.

Instead, he said, a group of experts will examine the current system of dealing with patients who had suffered harm through the National Health Service and recommend how that might be changed.

But his failure to accept outright the health committee’s recommendation, that a no-fault compensation package be offered to patients who were infected with the potentially fatal virus before blood screening was introduced, was met with anger from politicians and patients’ groups.

The SNP health spokeswoman, Nicola Sturgeon, said it was "unforgivable" to conduct yet more reviews when the case for compensation had been clearly made on moral grounds.

She also referred to the English High Court ruling last year that granted compensation under the Consumer Protection Act 1987 to a number of people infected after 1988 with hepatitis C through contaminated blood.

Mr Chisholm’s predecessor, Susan Deacon, responded by beginning financial settlements with around 20 similar patients in Scotland, a significant U-turn. She rejected compensation when it was first raised, saying the NHS did not pay compensation for non-negligent harm.