Hepatitis C sufferers haven't received promised federal money

Thousands of Canadians afflicted with hepatitis C who were promised compensation by the Harper government in 2006 have yet to see a dime.

According to claimants, doctors and their lawyers, many have been unable to obtain hospital and medical records to support their claim because the records are long gone.

"It's not my fault if there is no record kept at the hospital about my operation," Vancouver resident Giancarlo Mocellin said.

"They [the claims administrator] just want more and more and more [records] — and they keep asking for something that you don't have."

Most unapproved claimants, like Mocellin, received tainted blood decades ago.

They are among those who contracted the disease before 1986 and they were the last to be offered a settlement from the Canadian government through a fund valued at a maximum $962 million.

'People are already suffering': claimant

"I don't really know why they have to make it so difficult," said Mocellin. "People are already suffering for it."

Mocellin, 65, is a retired welder, who said he was forced to retire early — at age 55 — partly because hepatitis C made him too tired to get through his workday.

He had surgery at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver for a bleeding ulcer in 1967. He remembers being told he received three units of blood.

Mocellin received $10,450 in compensation through an earlier Red Cross class-action claim. Because of that, he received a letter from the administrator for the government settlement, inviting him to apply for money from the new fund.

Since then, he has been unable to convince the administrator, Crawford Class Action Services, that he did receive blood, despite an exhaustive search of records and letters of support from his doctor.

"It's depressing," said Mocellin. "It can really put you down. It's an insult, in a way."

St. Paul's Hospital wrote a letter saying Mocellin had been there in 1967, but that the hospital was unable to find any detailed records from the time.

The Red Cross wrote that its system could not trace a blood recipient that far back. 

Mocellin's family doctor, Man Kon Leung, wrote a letter stating, "The only risk factor is the blood transfusion. It is without hesitancy that I state that the probable cause of his infection was through his surgery." 

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Crawford responded that was not enough — that Mocellin now has to find a doctor who specializes in ulcer surgery and will say it is "more likely than not" that he received blood during surgery.

"If they can't accept my own doctor to do this, how am I going to get somebody who doesn't know me to do it? That is a big problem," said Mocellin.

"It's very difficult for me to understand what they are talking about."

The government set more stringent criteria for proving claims than the Red Cross did when it settled with the same claimaints in 2004.

"I have a couple of people who are exactly in that situation who were previously transfused and there is no record," said Sigfried Erb, one of Vancouver's top liver specialists. "One was a hemorrhoid operation, the other was an operation on his hand.

"The patients don't know how to get proof — that's where the problem is," Erb said. "The government should help them."

Less than half of fund paid out

Kerry Eaton, vice-president of Crawford Class Action Services, said the agency has received 9,098 claims since August 2007 and 3,863 — 40 per cent — have not yet been approved.

He said $398 million — less than half of the money available — has been paid out to claimants.

Crawford was contracted by the government to process all the claims at a cost to taxpayers of $20 million. The deadline to apply is June 30, 2010 — and any monies not paid out will be returned to government coffers.

"I'm sure they [the government] are trying to make it very difficult, very difficult, to avoid paying people," said Mocellin.

Chronic infection by the hep C virus can cause inflammation of the liver, leading to scarring of the liver, cirrhosis and other complications including liver cancer.

Erb estimates one-quarter of his eligible patients have been unable to get approval for what he's convinced are legitimate claims. The ones having the most trouble, he said, are often those who need help the most.

"The longer ago you were transfused, the more likely you are to have worse disease, the more likely you are to be sick — and the less likely you are to have access to records that prove your case," said Erb.

"Most of them have no other source of income. Most of them are very poor. Most of them can't earn any money any more. They are waiting … for a transplant, not earning any money … and filling in paperwork."

Settlement documents show the minimum available payment is $8,453 and the maximum $408,834 — depending on the patient's age and severity of illness.

Millions in legal and administration costs

Claimants can hire a lawyer to assist with their claims, but the lawyer takes a significant cut of the final payment.

According to David Klein, a Vancouver lawyer who handles many of these cases, fees range from 20 per cent to 33 per cent of the payout.

Klein said his firm charges a flat fee of 29 per cent. But its failure rate on claims is "quite high," he said — about 40 per cent of the cases.

"These are people I believe contracted the disease through blood transfusion, but I just couldn't prove it," Klein said. "There are a lot of areas where you get bogged down in this."

He added, "And, unfortunately, if you have to hire a lawyer, you have to pay the legal fees — and what you pay also goes to cover the costs of all the firm's unsucessful claims."

The cost of the settlement to taxpayers, so far, includes $37.29 million for legal fees and $20 million for administration.

"Pretty depressing, I would say," said Mocellin. "[Lawyers and administrators] can keep on making money out of people that should have received the money."

CBC News asked to speak with the new federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq about this, but her office replied by email that the minister "will not be available for this interview."

Even though he is entitled to compensation, Mocellin said he is abandoning his claim — out of sheer frustration.

"I'm just giving up. That's it. This is the end," he said.