Health and Community Care Committee, 25 Feb 2003
Meeting date: Tuesday, February 25, 2003
Official Report
210KB pdf
Hepatitis C
Agenda item 5 is the first of today's agenda items to look at hepatitis C. We have received a letter from Mr Philip Dolan of the Scottish Haemophilia Groups Forum. We have also received a separate sheet, which provides a résumé of the main points that Mr Dolan makes in his earlier letter.
I call people's attention to the fact that the Scottish Haemophilia Groups Forum intends to arrange for a freephone number to be published and displayed in centres where people who have been infected with hepatitis C as a result of blood products or transfusions are treated. The freephone number will allow people to register their interest should the Scottish Executive at some point agree to offer compensation. It seems that some individuals have been phoning the Scottish centre for infection and environmental health to say that they were interested in what was going on. Given the fact that this is a time of increasing uncertainty for haemophiliacs and those infected with hepatitis C, I just want to put on record the fact that the forum is setting up that freephone number to assist people in obtaining information at the present time.
We have two agenda items on hep C today. In the second item, we will decide what further action we want to take once we have received legal advice. If there are no comments or questions arising from Mr Dolan's letter, we will just note it at this point. I put on record again our thanks to Mr Dolan and his colleagues for the information that is contained in the letter.
I bring the public part of the meeting to a close. We will have a short break before we go into private session.
Meeting suspended until 15:51 and thereafter continued in private until 16:15.