The charity which runs a boarding school where former pupils received medical treatments using contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 1980s has said it is “so sorry” that they “have been victims of this tragedy”.
Several former pupils of the Lord Mayor Treloar School and College in Hampshire, which at the time was a boarding school for children with haemophilia, are taking legal action against the Treloar Trust, which operates the site.
Lawyers for the former pupils claim that more than 70 former pupils have died since their time at the school, with those still alive telling the PA news agency that they were given a “death sentence”.
Reading a statement on the trust’s behalf, Toby Riley-Smith KC said it was “so sorry” that many former pupils “were among those infected with hepatitis and HIV, as a result of treatment with contaminated blood products”.
Last year, the final report of the Infected Blood Inquiry, written by inquiry chairman Sir Brian Langstaff, said that the children at Treloar’s were “often regarded as objects for research”, and that there was “no doubt” that healthcare professionals at the school were aware of the risks of virus transmission.
