{"id":722935,"date":"2026-08-01T15:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T15:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/722935\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T15:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T15:08:10","slug":"what-happened-to-me-as-a-baby-makes-me-feel-dirty-i-worry-about-people-judging-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/722935\/","title":{"rendered":"What happened to me as a baby makes me feel dirty – I worry about people judging me"},"content":{"rendered":"

Diane Folkard was pregnant with her second child when she was told she had a serious blood disease\"Diane<\/p>\n

Diane Folkard is a victim of infected blood scandal.(Image: Colin Lane\/Liverpool Echo)<\/p>\n

A Merseyside mum lived with a dangerous and potentially fatal infection for 31 years before finding out about it when she was pregnant. She then traced the root cause of it back to her own time as a baby and discovered she was a victim of a major national scandal.<\/p>\n

Diane Folkard is a 38-year-old mum-of-two who lives in Wallasey<\/a>. Until 2019, when she was 31 and pregnant with her second child, she had absolutely no idea that she had lived her entire life with the viral infection Hepatitis C, which can be deadly if left untreated.<\/p>\n

She explained: “I was six months pregnant with my second child and ended up having pneumonia. I went to Arrowe Park hospital with my husband and they did some blood tests and my liver levels came back a bit strange. They said my liver enzymes were higher than average.”<\/p>\n

In evidence she would later give to the national Infected Blood Inquiry, Diane said she was taken into a side room and asked if she was aware that she had Hepatitis C.<\/p>\n

She told the inquiry: “I literally went white in the face and looked at my husband in shock. I was really annoyed and swore at the time.”<\/p>\n

Hepatitis C is a blood-borne virus that attacks the liver, leading to inflammation, scar tissue buildup (fibrosis) and can lead to severe long-term complications like cirrhosis, liver failure, and liver cancer.<\/p>\n

Diane said that after she was told she had the infection, she was asked if she used needles or if she had many sexual partners – which can be linked to the infection. She responded no to both.<\/p>\n

Speaking to the ECHO today, she explained how she told the medical professionals at the time that she believed the infection must date back to when she was baby and was given nine blood transfusions shortly after her birth.<\/p>\n

Diane was born the first of triplets in 1988 during an emergency C-section prompted by a premature rupture of membranes. Tragically one of her sisters died after birth. When Diane got older, she was told she had undergone the blood transfusions to restore her immunoglobin levels.<\/p>\n

She said she didn’t think much of it and got on with her life, eventually meeting her husband after graduating from university in 2010 and becoming pregnant with their first child in 2012.<\/p>\n

\"Diane<\/p>\n

Diane Folkard, victim of infected blood scandal. (Image: Colin Lane\/Liverpool Echo)<\/p>\n

She told the enquiry in 2020: “I had no knowledge or inclination that I was carrying Hep C. I therefore took no precautions to protect him or any other members of my family.”<\/p>\n

When she did eventually find out, while pregnant with her second child in 2019 – she said she could not receive treatment for the infection until after giving birth. Thankfully she was then able to be cured through a course of antiviral tablets.<\/p>\n

Diane is a victim of the Infected Blood Scandal. It is thought that in total, around 30,000 people in this country contracted HIV and Hepatitis C through contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 1980s.<\/p>\n

Much of these instances came as the NHS was using importing blood products from abroad, which used blood from high-risk donors such as prisoners and drug addicts.<\/p>\n

In total more than 3,000 people have died as a result of what MPs have described as the worst treatment disaster in NHS history.<\/p>\n

In 2024, the Infected Blood Inquiry, which was chaired by Sir Brian Langstaff, concluded that the infection of so many people could have been largely avoided, with a damning report stating that doctors, the NHS and governments had repeatedly failed victims.<\/p>\n

In 2020, Diane gave evidence to that inquiry. She said she could not believed that the dangerous Hepatitis C infection she was living with had not been detected earlier in her life.<\/p>\n

She said: “I had an emergency C-section 7 years earlier, I had numerous blood tests over the years. I wonder what on earth would have happened to me had it not been detected.”<\/p>\n

Thinking about the impact the infection may have had on her life, Diane says she has always suffered with brain fog and feels she is slow to understand and grasp concepts.<\/p>\n

She told the ECHO: “I don’t know what impact this has had but I imagine having Hepatitis C in my system for 31 years hasn’t been a good thing for me.”<\/p>\n

As well as any physical health implications, there has been a psychological impact as well as she has to declare her status in hospital and dental appointments. She added: “There is a stigma. When I have to go for blood tests now, it always comes up and I worry about people hearing and judging me. I worry they will think I have been sticking needles in my arms.”<\/p>\n

She previously told the inquiry: “It makes me feel dirty to think that I have suffered with a condition which has been undetected for all these years and which has been frowned upon for its association with drug use and the sex trade. It makes my skin crawl.”<\/p>\n

Diane has received compensation from the Infected Blood Compensation Authority, an independent body set up to issue pay awards to victims of the scandal.<\/p>\n

She is now writing and speaking about her experience and aiming to connect with other victims to understand how they have been affected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Diane Folkard was pregnant with her second child when she was told she had a serious blood disease…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":722936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55,41421],"class_list":["post-722935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wallasey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=722935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/722936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=722935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=722935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=722935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}