A woman whose father died when he was given a contaminated blood transfusion is joining protestors outside the office of David Cameron urging him to pay proper compensation to victims’ families.
Wisbech businessman Stuart Carl Oliver died two months after discovering he had contracted the virus hepatitis C.
Now, his daughter Kerry Blake Oliver is fighting in his memory saying: “Dribs and drabs and begging bowls are not good enough, we need proper compensation for the nightmare that families have been through.”
Mr Cameron last year promised to put compensation on his priority list - but 15 months later nothing has been done, she said, which is why she will be among protestors outside his office in Witney, Oxfordshire, on Friday (27).
“We are still waiting,” she said. “Scotland is looking after its victims, England needs to follow suit.
“Sorry is not good enough, it needs to be backed up with action.”
Kerry’s dad died in 2005 at the age of 47 from a contaminated blood transfusion in 1987.
Unknown to him it had laid waste to his liver for two decades.
The contaminated blood scandal saw more than 6,000 people infected by inferior blood products used by the NHS up until 1991 that were riddled with the viruses HIV and hepatitis C.
Some 2,000 people have already lost their lives, yet victims and their families have never received proper compensation and many have been left in financial ruin, she said.
“We lost absolutely everything, our house was repossessed, we were made homeless and the struggle still continues because there’s no closure.
“There’s been no compensation whatsoever and if my mother wants any assistance she has to go begging,” she said.
A government consultation on reforming systems of support for victims was launched in January but has been widely panned as it will leave most financially worse-off.
Widows of the dead will face a complex six-category system of payments and children of the dead have been ignored completely.
Before his death her father had been an established roofing contractor. He built the roofs of famous buildings such as Bluewater shopping centre in Kent, the Eden Project visitor centre in Cornwall, and Lord Norman Foster’s Albion Riverside development in London.
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