The taintedblood Timeline  -  what really happened...

A team of scientists, working at the Chiron Corporation, discover, clone and sequence the Hepatitis C virus - the causative agent of Non-A Non-B Hepatitis (NANBH).

The pioneering work of scientist Michael Houghton, Ph.D. and colleagues Qui-Lim Choo, Ph.D. and George Kuo, Ph.D. goes back as far as 1982.

A landmark case, A vs. National Blood Authority, is brought by 114 people infected with HCV via contaminated blood. Mr Justice Burton rules compensation be paid by the National Blood Authority and Velindre NHS Trust.

On 18th November 1987, Chiron Corporation filed a priority application in the USA for a patent describing the cloning and characterization of Hepatitis C virus as the causative agent of Non-A, Non-B Hepatitis.

The development of HCV tests then followed, with Chiron developing an alliance with Ortho Clinical Diagnostics. Understandably, following these discoveries, time was required in order to validate and register the HCV assay globally.

However...

The following timetable shows when various countries commenced anti-Hep C screening in relation to the Ortho test evaluation and trials:

tr> tr> tr> tr> tr>

Nov 1989	Japan
Feb 1990	Australia
Mar 1990	France (1 March): Luxembourg (new donors only, 1 March)
Apr 1990	Finland (1 April – all donations: partially started 1 February)
May 1990	USA
May 1990	Austria (2 May): Amsterdam (other Netherlands Centres later)
Jun 1990	Canada: Germany (by 1 July)
Jul 1990	Belgium (1 July)
Aug 1990	Switzerland (1 August)
Sep 1990	Luxembourg (all donors)
Oct 1990	Italy: (many centres)
Oct 1990	Spain: (all by 12 October, some earlier)
1990/91	Norway
Jan 1991	Sweden (legal requirement published 24 January to start as soon as possible)
Mar 1991	(not before Mar) Portugal (mandatory)
Mar 1991	(some earlier): Cyprus: Greece: Hungary: Iceland: Malta
Apr 1991	Netherlands (mandatory 1 April)
Jun 1991	Denmark
Aug 1991	Italy (balance)
Sep 1991	UK (1 September)
Sep/Oct 1991	Ireland

Note: It is clear that the United Kingdom were in no hurry to introduce anti-HCV screening. Indeed, they could be said to have deliberately procrastinated, making them the last-but-one country in this list to introduce screening. This is consistent with what the Science and Technology Select Committee Inquiry report referred to as an over-optimistic "wait and see" stance, instead of taking the maximum precautionary approach. It is also possible to learn more about what can only be described as procrastination and stalling of the introduction of HCV testing by reading Chapter 9 of the Penrose Preliminary Report.