§ Mrs. BeckettTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what research her Department is doing on hepatitis C.
§ Mr. SackvilleThe Department of Health is funding through its centrally commissioned research programme a project which is looking at behaviours associated with exposure to hepatitis C, hepatitis B and HIV infections.
The main agency through which the Government support biomedical and clinical research is the Medical Research Council which receives its grant in aid from the Office of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and which is, I understand, funding a number of projects researching into hepatitis C.
§ Mrs. BeckettTo ask the Secretary of State for Health when her Department first became aware of the risk of transmission of hepatitis C through blood transfusion products; when blood transfusion products were first screened for hepatitis; and when the blood test for hepatitis C was first available.
§ Mr. SackvilleIt has been known since the 1970s that, despite the introduction of testing for hepatitis B, some recipients of blood and blood products continued to develop hepatitis which was neither hepatitis A nor hepatitis B—NANB. In 1988 a virus called hepatitis C was reported in scientific literature, which was thought to be the main cause of NANB transfusion-associated hepatitis. The first anti-hepatitis C tests were reported in scientific literature in March 1989, but did not become available until later in the year. Expert advice was that these tests should not be introduced because of proven deficiencies. These first tests had a large number of false positive and false negative results and no satisfactory confirmatory tests were available. In due course, the test was improved considerably and also confirmatory tests became available. Routine testing of all blood donations for antibodies for the hepatitis C virus was introduced in September 1991, when the expert advice was that sufficiently reliable tests were available.
§ Mrs. BeckettTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will make a statement on any plans she has to compensate patients developing hepatitis C from transfusion of NHS blood products.
§ Mr. SackvilleThe Government have no plans to make payments to patients who have been infected with hepatitis C as a result of national health service treatment.