The Canadian Red Cross has apologised for what has been termed Canada's worst public health scandal, which resulted in thousands of patients being infected with HIV and hepatitis C. The Red Cross's chief executive officer, Pierre Duplessis, made the apology in a videotape shown in court, in which the organisation was fined $C5000 (£2200; $4000; €3300) after it pleaded guilty to a charge of violating the Food and Drug Regulation Act for distributing a contaminated product.
"The Canadian Red Cross society is deeply sorry for the injury and death . . . for the suffering caused to families and loved ones of those who were harmed. We accept responsibility through our plea for having distributed harmful products for those that rely on us for their health," he said.
Mike McCarthy, spokesman for the Canadian Hemophilia Society, was not satisfied with the apology: "How can anyone be satisfied? Thousands of people lost their lives. Hundreds and hundreds of people are living with these fatal viruses today. There is no great outcome here for anybody that's gone through the tainted blood scandal."
Janet Conners, an AIDS activist whose haemophiliac husband Randy was infected with HIV through blood products from the Red Cross and died in 1994, said, "I'm less than pleased with the outcome . . . I feel this resolution once again excludes the spouses and children, because we were secondarily affected." She said that the Red Cross may have got off too easily because of its status as a charitable organisation. And she suggested that a corporation that distributed cyanide would have been punished more severely.
As part of its plea bargain, the Red Cross agreed to give $C1.5m to the University of Ottawa for a scholarship for the family members of those affected and for a research endowment fund. Criminal charges against the Red Cross's former director of blood transfusions, three other doctors, and the New Jersey based Armour Pharmaceutical Company, were dropped as part of the agreement.
In 1993, the federal government set up an inquiry into the scandal under Mr Justice Horace Krever, who blamed governments and the Red Cross for failing to put safety measures in place to protect the public. Mr Krever called for a new independent blood system to be set up, with a mandate to put safety first and to be accountable to the public. The Canadian Blood Services and Hema-Quebec, both non-profit making agencies, resulted (BMJ 1997;315:1559).
Mr Krever recommended in his report in 1997 that everyone who received the contaminated blood product should be compensated. Compensation packages have been offered by the federal and provincial governments, but many people still complain that they are insufficient.