ABSTRACT
Starting in the early 1980s, France saw a large number of transfusion patients become infected by blood transfusions contaminated by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the hepatitis C virus (HCV). The country sustained one of the highest rates of contaminated transfusion recipients and hemophiliacs in Europe. This high contamination rate may be largely explained by the organization of blood collection in France at the time and the particularities of its blood derivative industry. However, these institutions cannot be held solely responsible for the crisis; politicians and French health administrators also played an important role. Indeed, intensive media coverage of the crisis, as well as the indictment of a number of doctors and high-ranking officials, helped transform this issue into a scandal at the dawn of the 1990s. In the public’s mind, the contaminated blood affair became the country’s first health crisis (Chauveau 2011). It also significantly altered the way politicians and public authorities manage health safety concerns.
