By
Daily Mail Reporter
18:08 EST, 19 July 2013
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18:08 EST, 19 July 2013
Blood money: Department of Health are planning to sell Plasma Resources UK to American firm
Ministers have been accused of putting Britain’s blood stocks at risk by selling off the main supplier to an American private equity firm.
The Department of Health plans to sell the state-owned Plasma Resources UK to Bain Capital, the company co-founded by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, in a £230million deal.
Critics say the move could put blood supplies at risk of contamination because the private equity firm may not carry out such rigorous safety checks.
In the 1980s as many as 10,000 patients with the blood-clotting disorder haemophilia contracted HIV or Aids after being given contaminated plasma supplies.
Plasma is the main component of blood and is given to thousands of patients daily including burns victims – to increase their fluids – and those with liver or kidney disease.
It also enables the blood to clot. It is a vital resource for haemophiliacs and patients with other disorders who are at risk of major bleeds.
Former health minister Lord Owen said that there was a risk of contamination because Bain Capital may not have such stringent safeguards as a publicly-quoted firm answerable to shareholders.
He said: ‘It’s hard to conceive of a worse outcome for a sale of this particularly sensitive national health asset than a private equity company with none of the safeguards in terms of governance of a publicly quoted company and being answerable to shareholders.
‘Private equity has a useful function, as I saw in years past on the advisory board of Terra Firma, but Bain Capital should not have been chosen for this sale. Is there no limit to what and how this coalition government will privatise?’
Earlier this year he wrote to David Cameron urging him to halt the sale.
His letter read: ‘In 1975, against some resistance from those guarding the finances of the DHSS budget, I decided as Minister of Health to invest in self-sufficiency in the UK for blood and blood products.
‘I now believe this country is on the point of making exactly the same mistake again. The world plasma supply line has been in the past contaminated and I fear it will almost certainly continue to be contaminated.’
Romney deal: Bain Capital, the company co-founded by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, is set to pay £230million for state-owned Plasma Resources UK
Plasma Resources UK is the NHS’s main supplier of blood plasma although most of its donors come from the US.
A branch of the firm based in the US, DCI Biologicals Inc, collects blood from American donors and sends it to laboratories in Hertfordshire.
Vince Cable warned yesterday that the blood donor system must not be put at risk by ‘thoughtless commercial activity’.
However, the Business Secretary added: ‘If the basic principles of the blood donor system are preserved, I wouldn’t want to stand in the way of the Government deriving some revenue from it.’
Dr Lucy Reynolds, an expert in infectious diseases from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, strongly argued against the sale earlier this year.
In an academic paper she wrote: ‘Plasma supplies have a long record of being operated on a not for profit basis, using voluntary donors where all the necessary checks take place.
‘The difference with a commercial firm is that they will want to have as many donors as possible and be looking to secure large profits first and foremost.
‘This amounts to the Government abandoning UK blood products users to the tender mercies of the cheapest supplier.’
Health minister Dan Poulter said: ‘This deal will ensure that patients will have access to high quality plasma products for years to come.’
Devin O’Reilly, managing director of Bain Capital in London, said the company had completed over 50 healthcare investments in companies such as HCA and will ensure ‘all of this experience and expertise is applied to building PRUK’.
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I was wondering what will be next to sell? Nearly nothing left, NHS, Royal Mail and blood bank are last few treasures this country has – hands off!!!!!!!
PeaceToAllGoodPeople
,
Brighton UK,
20/7/2013 05:05
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I was wondering what will be next to sell? Nearly nothing left, NHS, Royal Mail and blood bank are last few treasures this country has – hands off!!!!!!!
PeaceToAllGoodPeople
,
Brighton UK,
20/7/2013 05:05
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If a conservative politician’s body belonging to any of the New Conservative (New Labour), Liberal Conservative (Liberal Democrats), Conservative (Old Thatcher) or UKIP (New Thatcher) parties was privatised on the operating table it (their body) would be dead at the moment of privatisation and deregulation. The body would die because the end of the digestive system would believe it operate at a lower cost for higher profit the mental functions of the politician’s brain than the brain while the lungs believe they could generate cost savings and efficiencies by removing the heart as conservatives believe the heart is a vestigial and obsolete appendage and try their best to operate without one (that is without a conscience). All conservatives know the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Student
,
Leeds, United Kingdom,
20/7/2013 04:15
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say goodbye to blood donors, who kindly donate their blood FREE.
ramblin rose
,
fertiliser,
20/7/2013 03:16
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Who would sell anything to that firm?
Michael Smith
,
Mönchengladbach,
20/7/2013 02:57
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When are we going to stop selling out to the Americans. At the end of the day, they’re only interested in two things. Making sure there is no competition from anyone else and making as much money as they can. Everything and everyone else can go hang for all they care!
Fed up UK
,
Burnley, United Kingdom,
20/7/2013 02:29
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Private companies, private equity e.g Water Companies, Electricity companies, Gas Companies, Rail Companies and now parts of the NHS if they go private are simply there to make money for private owners and share holders. They are not there to provide a service, the service they provide is an inconvenience they have to put up with to make the money.
Blue Avid
,
London,
20/7/2013 02:18
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