“Selling the family silver”- is this what we really want?
In 2013 the UK plasma (blood) bank, PRUK, was sold for £230m to a US company. The Department of Health overlooked several healthcare or pharmaceutical firms and at least one blood plasma specialist before choosing to sell an 80 per cent stake in Plasma Resources UK to Bain Capital, a global alternative investment firm, who only paid £90m up front with the remaining £110m due in a five year deferred payment deal. Four years later sold it was sold to Creat a Chinese company for £820m.PRUK was brought into public ownership in 1975, by Dr. David Owen, because of the risks associated with contaminated blood (HIV, Creutzfeldt-Jakob) under for-profit conditions. So not only could the plasma products now be a risk but a whopping profit has been made by the US company who bought it. Thank you Hunt and the Conservative/LibDem coalition for doing such a potentially dangerous deal for UK citizens and giving away some £600m which could have been used for the NHS. I don’t remember hearing anything about this on the BBC, does anyone else? But it does make you think what other public assets were sold and not reported between 2010 and 2017.
Libby Kemp ● 3252d0 Comments