Olympic medallist Sharron Davies has backed the campaign for compensation for infected blood scandal victims as she told of her mother’s decades of suffering.
The former swimmer and TV Gladiator has opened up about the impact on her family of being ‘let down by the system’ after NHS failures which are the focus of an ongoing public inquiry.
Thousands of people contracted HIV and hepatitis C in what has been described as the worst treatment catastrophe in NHS history.
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and London mayor Sadiq Khan last month joined those calling for families to be compensated as soon as a long-awaiting public inquiry report is published within weeks.
And now Davies, who won 400m medley silver at the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow, has given her support to the campaign while revealing new details of her mother’s own ordeal.
Olympian Sharron Davies has spoken of how her mother died after contracting hepatitis C and then liver cancer following routine surgery for gallstones
She told how Sheila Davies developed liver cancer in her 40s after being given contaminated blood during an operation to treat gallstones and then contracting hepatitis C.
Sheila died aged 78 in 2017 and her daughter, 61, has now told the Sunday Times: ‘My mum suffered for 30 years of her life with it.
‘It would have been really good if Mum had had some help towards the end because she was a pensioner and she was desperate to leave her house to her children.
‘That was the most important thing she wanted, so she scrimped and saved in the last few years just to make sure that the house was there for us when she died.
‘So I think from my perspective, what’s terribly important is that support is given to people who need it and are dying right now.’
She revealed how it took years after the routine gallstones surgery on her mother for her diagnosis with hepatitis C, eventually shown following a blood test.
A doctor told Sheila it must have been during the operation that she contracted the infection which went on to damage her liver and cause cancer.
Official figures suggest one in three people who get hepatitis C will develop cirrhosis in the next 20 to 30 years.
Sharron Davies, pictured here ahead of the 2002 Commonwealth Games, has described her mother as someone who would not have considered compensation from the NHS
The former Olympian, who won 400m medley silver at the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow, insists victims and their families should now be given support
Davies followed up her swimming career by being one of ITV’s Gladiators in the 1990s
One in five with that condition will subsequently suffer liver failure, while liver cancer will affect one in 20 – with both being potentially fatal.
Sheila Davies spent her last 20 years for the Ministry of Defence at Devonport naval base in the family’s home city of Plymouth.
Sharron said of her mother’s hepatitis C infection: ‘It is very frustrating because I’m sure Mum would still be here today had it not been for this
‘It feels very unjust that this was a woman who was really fit and healthy and had every single faculty going who has been let down by the system she was part of.’
She described Sheila as ‘just one of these really law-abiding, honest, hard-working women that paid into the system’.
And she said her mother ‘would have thought that taking compensation would have been taking money away from the NHS’.
But the Olympian is backing campaigners who want immediate compensation for the infected blood scandal’s victims, plus partners, children, parents and carers.
Up to 30,000 patients with haemophilia and other bleeding disorders were given tainted medical products in the 1970s and 1980s, with thousands infected with HIV and hepatitis C as a result.
Demonstrators outside the Infected Blood inquiry in London last July held placards urging the Government to recognise all victims of the NHS scandal
Thousands of patients were infected with HIV and hepatitis C through contaminated blood transfusions in the 1970s and 1980s (stock image)
At least 2,900 NHS patients – including young children – died from being infected with HIV and hepatitis C.
Infected donations came from US prisoners, sex workers and drug addicts, who were paid to give their blood to the manufacturers of the product called Factor VIII.
Most victims had haemophilia – a rare blood-clotting disorder – and relied on regular injections of the products to survive.
All surviving victims and their bereaved partners are entitled to an interim £100,000 pay-out.
But the existing scheme leaves out parents who lost their children as well as those youngsters orphaned when their parents died.
Sir Brian Langstaff, who is chairing a public inquiry into the scandal, has previously called for a full compensation programme to be set-up immediately – and he also demanded it be widened to include other victims who remain ‘unrecognised’.
The Government wanted to wait for the conclusion of the inquiry ordered in 2017 by then-Prime Minister Theresa May before setting up a full scheme.
But MPs called for swifter action given that someone dies due to infected blood ‘every four days’.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, a former Health Secretary, told the inquiry last July the Government accepted its ‘moral duty’ to compensate those affected by the contaminated blood scandal.
But he warned that further work was needed before payments could be made.
Rishi Sunak’s government was defeated in the Commons last December when dozens of Conservative MPs rebelled to support a Labour policy to speed up access to payment.
It marked Mr Sunak’s first Commons defeat as PM and the first defeat on a whipped vote since the last general election in 2019.
Labour MP Dame Diana Johnson has tabled a Commons amendment urging ministers to establish a compensation body inside three months of the Victims and Prisoners Bill coming into force.
Among the many victims were Colin Smith, who was infected in 1983 as a baby and died in 1990 aged seven after contracting HIV.
Others included Mike Dorricott, infected in 1982 before dying in 2015 aged 47, and Nicky Calder who was diagnosed with HIV in 1985 and died in 1999 aged 25.
Colin’s father, also named Colin, told the inquiry: ‘We should be living our lives now, but we will never really be able to until we are given the full truth.
‘I am not willing to have gone through all of this and be told that they did nothing wrong.’
Nicky’s mother Rosemary Calder, who chairs the Tainted Blood Bereaved Parent Support Group, has said that young haemophiliacs such as her son – treated at the age of three with infected blood – were used as ‘guinea pigs’.
Rosemary Calder, chair of the Tainted Blood Bereaved Parent Support Group, lost her son Nicky Calder who was diagnosed with HIV in 1985 and died in 1999 aged 25
Labour MP Dame Diana Johnson has tabled a Commons amendment urging ministers to establish a compensation body inside three months of a new bill coming into force
Protesters were seen outside the inquiry in central London calling for justice last July
The father of Colin Smith (pictured) has told the infected blood inquiry: ‘We should be living our lives now, but we will never really be able to until we are given the full truth’
Nicky Calder was given an infected blood product to treat haemophilia before being diagnosed with HIV in 1985 and dying in 1999 aged 25
Mike Dorricott was among the victims, dying aged 47 in 2015 after being infected in 1982
Mr Dorricott, a mild haemophiliac, had been given Factor VIII when given surgery to have four wisdom teeth removed in December 1982 at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary.
He was later diagnosed with hepatitis C and died in 2015 from liver cancer linked to the disease, leaving behind wife Ann and two daughters Sarah and Eleanor.
Sharron Davies has previously spoken about how her first granddaughter nearly died of an infection that doctors feared was meningitis.
She revealed in 2020 that Ariya was forced to spend her first two weeks in a neonatal intensive care unit after contracting group B strep (GBS), a bacterial infection.