Contaminated blood inquiry: Wife says husband suffered 'horrific death'

A mother of three has told the first day of the Infected Blood Inquiry in Cardiff that her husband suffered a "horrific death" from hepatitis C after a blood transfusion.

Karisa Jones said she and her partner Geraint, who was a manager of a frozen food company, that they were let down by doctors who failed to spot signs they were both carrying the virus, until 22 years after his surgery.

She revealed his right leg was crushed by a forklift truck in 1990, which led to him having it amputated below the knee and several emergency blood transfusions at Morriston Hospital in Swansea.

Mrs Jones, from Pontardawe, said the couple and their daughters just "got on with their lives" - while rashes on his legs in later years were put down to the way he slept in bed.

But when he began vomiting blood in April 2012, he was taken to hospital - and a scan revealed Mr Jones had a "massive tumour" on his liver - and he had also contracted hepatitis C, giving him just months to live.

She said: "I had never seen so much blood coming out of his mouth. He was awful, very pale and shaky. I knew it was something serious."

As a precaution, the family was tested for the virus, with only Mrs Jones coming back positive, having contracted it from her husband.

She said he was "devastated" and "blamed himself for what happened" to her - and vowed that he would still be alive to look after her once she had received treatment, but that was not to be.

Mrs Jones said he became a "broken man" while doctors tried to prolong his life by injecting chemotherapy directly into his tumour, but he died in his wife's arms aged 50 on 28 September 2012, less than six months after he was diagnosed.

An inquest found he died from cirrhosis of the liver caused by hepatitis C.

His wife said: "He was yellow, his eyes were yellow. He was a skeleton of a man. He couldn't eat. He was vomiting blood up all the time.

"I've never seen such a horrific death in all my life. He suffered. He fought and he suffered."

After delaying her own treatment so she could spend time with her husband, she was eventually given the all-clear, although she still claims to suffer from side effects of her treatment.

She said: "I lost my hair, all my skin broke open into sores. I couldn't eat food as everything tasted like soap. I was vomiting from morning to night. I was too weak to move and I was tired. I had no quality of life because I was so ill.

"I'm so down and depressed, it's just a totally different life to what it was before I went on the treatment."

She said she believed doctors missed chances to detect her infection, which would have also alerted them to her husband's, when she attended hospital in the years before their diagnosis, including in 2000 when she showed flu-like symptoms and tests showed her liver readings were high.

Thousands of patients were infected with HIV and hepatitis C through contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 1980s - and around 2,400 people died.

Chairing the inquiry, former High Court judge Sir Brian Langstaff promised to put people at the heart of the hearing.

He said the scandal was "the greatest treatment disaster in the history of the NHS".

Sir Brian added: "We do not have the luxury of much time, for people continue to suffer and die. But those who are not heard orally during this week, and those in other centres who would like to be heard, but for whom there is no time for them to speak orally, will be heard."

Previous witness hearings have taken place in London, Belfast, Leeds and Glasgow and two inquiries have been branded a whitewash by campaigners.