Former Olympic swimmer recounts mother's gruelling last moments - 'The NHS let her down'

Former Olympic swimmer recounts mother's gruelling last moments - 'The NHS let her down'
Gabrielle Wilde

By Gabrielle Wilde


Published: 20/05/2024

- 13:42

Updated: 20/05/2024

- 15:06

Between 1970 and the early 1990s, over 30,000 people were infected with HIV and Hepatitis C as a result of receiving contaminated blood

Former Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies left viewers feeling very emotional as she remembered her mother's gruelling last moments on GB News today.

More than 30,000 people have developed silent killer infections hepatitis C and HIV after being affected by contaminated blood products and transfusions between 1970 and 1991.

Speaking to GB News she said: "My mum was amazing. She's my mum, we all say that about mums, don't we?

"But she was very quiet and a very reserved kind of person. She didn't smoke, she didn't drink. She hardly ever left Plymouth. She worked in the mod down there in the civil service until she was 70.

"She didn't take a single penny of anything from the Government in support. She just kept quiet about this condition. We knew as a family and she died in 2017 prematurely, like 3,000 other people have so far, and are still dying because of this terrible silent killer.

"Haemophiliacs that were given these drugs and plasma in the 70s and the 80s died much quicker."

She added: "My mum was of that era where she just idolised the NHS in a lot of ways, and towards the end the NHS really seriously let her down.

"Because of her age, she was sidetracked. So she used her savings and I went with her to Harley Street to see a specialist, and he said if we'd come six months early, he could have operated and removed the cancerous part of her liver. But he said it was now too late."

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

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