A victim of the tainted blood scandal was condemned to live on £80 a week after wrongly being told his own drinking had triggered his terminal condition.
Peter Burney’s life fell apart when he was diagnosed with end-stage liver failure a decade ago and had to give up his £90,000-a-year job as an office manager to survive on benefits.
The grandfather-of-three, who has less than two years to live and will next week select his own burial plot, now knows he was one of thousands infected by contaminated blood provided by the NHS.
But for two-and-a-half years after he was diagnosed, he was repeatedly told his condition was caused by alcohol.
Documents seen by the Daily Mail even suggest that for several months during this period Mr Burney’s doctors knew that his hepatitis C may have been linked to transfusions he had received as a young man.
Peter Burney, 60, (pictured with his wife Christine in 1994) who has less than two years to live, had to give up his £90,000-a-year job as an office manager to survive on benefits after doctor's wrongly told him he was to blame for his liver failure
Earlier this month Mr Burney, 60, told the Infected Blood Inquiry he had recently been diagnosed with incurable liver cancer as a result of the hepatitis and would not live to see justice for the ‘mass murder’ committed by the Department of Health.
He said he and fellow victims were ‘dying in poverty’ because the Government has refused to give them compensation.
Speaking at his home in Stockport this week, Mr Burney said that when he was diagnosed with liver failure a decade ago, he had to give up his job running back-office functions at a local firm to live on £80 a week in benefits, plus help with housing.
For the next two years he believed his condition was self-inflicted, as a result of his drinking, meaning he could not get support from the infected blood scheme.
‘I drank… but I didn’t drink that much,’ he said. ‘I was always quite confused by that but I accepted what they said. They made me believe, and my family believe, that this was down to my drinking.’ At one point, on December 16, 2010, Mr Burney’s family was told he would not live until Christmas and doctors drew up a do not resuscitate (DNR) notice without his knowledge.
‘That notice would have gone to the coroner in the event of my death,’ he said. ‘He would have registered my death as alcohol-related cirrhosis. There would have been no mention of hepatitis C.’
Yet his medical notes show that on October 28 – nearly two months earlier – doctors at Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport referred to a ‘history of blood transfusion’ and hepatitis C which had recently ‘come to light’.
Documents seen by the Daily Mail even suggest that for several months during this period Mr Burney’s (pictured recently with his wife) doctors knew that his hepatitis C may have been linked to
