Our Readers SayCan you help?How do I get compensated for being infected with Hep C? How do I get compensated for being infected with Hep C?
11/04/2008
A victim of Hepatitis C is facing what he describes as a "major uphill struggle" seeking compensation from abroad similar to that applicable here in the UK.
Gerry Radcliffe from Yorkshire, whose contamination with the virus was featured in Mature Times website in March last year (see story linked at the bottom of the page), is trying to find a route through the complicated laws of this country to representation in an equally complex legal system in the Middle East, where he lived and worked for twelve years.
"So far," he says, "I have made no progress at all, despite trying to gain the support of my local MP, the Hep C Trust, the Hep C Forum, firms of solicitors, and charity groups in my home town of Huddersfield. No-one seems to have any idea or suggestion of how I can get my case put before health authorities in the United Arab Emirates."
In 1986 Gerry started work for the government of the emirate of Dubai, writing and reading on-air news bulletins for the state-run FM radio station, then as public relations manager for the Dubai Commerce and Tourism Promotion Board. He was working in public relations in 1994 when his car crashed into a lamppost, putting him in a coma, had his spleen removed so his blood no longer has a self-defence system and robbing him of the senses of smell and taste.
But ten years of recovery led to an assessment of his blood supply in hospital in October 2004 - an assessment which told him he had been infected with an Afro strain of the Hep C virus - a strain which had been in one of the 12 pints of blood he received at the Rashid Hospital in Dubai.
"My life-saving operation was, unfortunately, at the wrong time," he explains. "Two years later, in 1996 - the year I returned to Dubai for another four year stint in journalism - health authorities introduced blood screening which would have detected the infection in that pint of donated blood. The same preventitive screening had been introduced in the UK in 1991.
"Anyone infected in a similar blood transfusion or organ transplant in a UK hospital before that date is paid £20,000 for being given the Hep C virus, and £25,000 if - as in my case - it develops into cirrhosis of the liver. But I cannot find a way of making a similar claim where hospital staff infected me - in Dubai, almost fourteen years ago."
If any readers have had similar experiences, or can advise on possible ways through the legal system, email jayne.warren@maturetimes.co.uk.