Returning to Treloar’s School brings back many bittersweet memories for Gary Webster, Steve Nicholls, Richard Warwick and Ade Goodyear.
This transformative school in rural Hampshire is where these men were sent as hemophiliac children to live and learn among other children who needed the best 24-hour medical care.
The school, with its location National Health Service clinic, was designed to help these boys live as close to a normal childhood as possible.
Instead, what happened here saw 75 of his schoolmates die of AIDS and Hepatitis. Only 58 students survived.
Unbeknownst to the boys or their parents, the hemophiliac children here were included in secret trials to test blood products that could be developed for use in patients with blood clotting disorders.
But the product called Factor 8 was being imported from America with blood taken from prisoners, sex workers and drug addicts.
Warnings about the risk of using untreated and unscreened blood products were known.
The doctors went ahead anyway – even though several boys were falling ill.
‘They exploited access to our tiny veins’
Steve Nicholls was infected with hepatitis C.
“We all received injections called prophylaxis, which meant we received injections usually every other day, three times a week,” says Steve. “So they got access to all of our tiny veins – and then they exploited that.
“They put the product in and went out and researched that blood without informing our parents.”
His schoolmate Richard Warwick, who was infected with HIV and Hepatitis C, recalls how the boys were forced to inject syringes full of potentially deadly viruses into their own veins.
Richard Warwick said: ‘We were playing Russian roulette’
Richard remembers: “Every time we went into that treatment room in the morning and sat on the three-foot-square white tables and were given vials to mix into syringes filled with Factor 8, right?
“We were playing Russian roulette. We didn’t know what we were giving ourselves.”
Documents presented to the Infected blood inquiry show that the amount of Factor 8 blood products used at Treloar increased substantially during the 1970s and 1980s.
It has been suggested that this was because doctors were treating patients preventatively.
See more information:
Blood donations ‘collected from UK prisons’
Grieving families say loved ones were ‘used’
How risks were missed during the scandal
Gary Webster, another former student infected with Hepatitis C and HIV, speaks on behalf of all those infected and affected by the treatment scandal. He wants justice to be done.
He says: “We have waited many years for the inquiry to begin. It’s been going on for four years, so I guess we just want the truth to come out.
“I think we all want to be vindicated here. Telling our story about what happened during that period.”
Gary Webster wants justice to be served
‘We lost everything’
Ade Goodyear also lives with hepatitis C and HIV. His testimony at the inquest was scathing.
Ade Goodyear’s testimony at the inquest was damning
Ade remembers how he was brought back to class with several other boys.
The doctor lined them all up and callously, without feeling or remorse, simply ran the line with his finger raised: “You did it, you didn’t do it, you did it…”
The boys had little idea of the damage inflicted on their bodies.
Ade told Sky News: “We came to this school to be educated, as I said, and to learn and go out and work.
“We lost everything. We lost our careers, we lost family members.
“The list goes on. So what we look for is contrition. That’s very important. Meeting them in a corner and contrition and an open, frank apology on all levels. All levels.”
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What happened at Treloar’s house is one of the darkest chapters in the tainted blood scandal.
The school says it “placed its trust in the treatment and advice provided by the site-based NHS clinic at the time”.
In a statement, it added: “This national scandal has devastated countless lives.
“As a school and college dedicated to supporting young people with disabilities, the stories of our former students who have become infected are especially moving to hear.
“Treloar staff, students and their families have jointly placed their trust in the treatment and advice provided by the NHS clinic and the doctors and medical professionals who ran it in the 1970s and 1980s.
“It was shocking to discover, through the ongoing public inquiry, that some of our students may have received unsafe or experimental treatment, and that the NHS did not always obtain sufficient consent.”
Other Infected Blood Survivors Speak Out
Gary, Steve, Richard and Ade will be present at the publication of the report next week.
Many of his classmates did not live to see this day.
This story originally appeared on News.sky.com read the full story
