Blood: Contamination
To ask His Majesty's Government how many victims of contaminated blood in the UK were infected with hepatitis D in addition to hepatitis B; and how this has affected their prognosis.
Government answer
The work undertaken so far to address the issues regarding contaminated blood in the United Kingdom has been related to the hepatitis C and HIV infections.
The Infected Blood Inquiry, in its Expert Report to the Infected Blood Inquiry: Statistics noted in relation to hepatitis B (HBV), that “due to the limitations in the data available, it is not possible to answer the questions set with any reasonable accuracy when compared to other infections we investigated. There was a lack of an integrated approach at the onset of donor screening in 1971/72 to identify donors who were infectious HBV carriers. Furthermore, people infected with HBV have never received financial support, and so funds are not a source of data.”
For these reasons, the Government has not made an assessment of the number of victims from contaminated blood that have been infected with HBV or hepatitis D in the United Kingdom, due to the lack of available data.