Legal Case Challenges Cut-off Date For Ex-gratia Payments To Infected Blood Victims

• Published date: 18 September 2020
• Subject Matter: Food, Drugs, Healthcare, Life Sciences
• Law Firm: Leigh Day
• Author: Leigh Day

Carolyn Challis has been refused an ex-gratia payment because she became infected as a result of the transfusions received after the September 1991 cut-off date of the government's scheme to compensate victims of the infected blood scandal.

The Department of Health argues that after this date the National Health Service had in place a system to screen all blood transfusions for Hepatits C infection.

Only people who became infected as a result of the transfusions received before the September 1991 date qualify for the '20,000 payment.

Represented by Leigh Day solicitors, Carolyn has issued a claim in the high court for judicial review of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care's decision to stick with the 1991 date when all ex-gratia payments schemes were rolled into one in November, 2017.

Carolyn, a 64-year-old mother of three adult children, believes she was infected with Hepatitis C as a result of the transfusions received between March 1992 and July 1993 from one of the blood transfusions she received as part of the many medical interventions for her cancer.

The virus has had such a debilitating impact that it has cost her her family life. She describes living in a "brain fog" with chronic fatigue and experiencing periods of being completely incapacitated over 10 years.

Carolyn is a core participant in the ongoing Infected Blood Inquiry (IBI) under the chairmanship of Sir Brian Langstaff which is due to resume hearings on Tuesday, 22 September when Sir David Owen will be giving evidence.

Carolyn's story and her evidence to the inquiry can be found here.

Her lawyers argue that the 1991 cut off is wrong because some blood and blood products that entered the NHS system prior to September 1991 were stored by NHS bodies...