Infected blood scandal: 1,000s of victims knowingly exposed to 'unacceptable' risks, scathing report reveals
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The biggest treatment scandal in NHS history could have been largely prevented but the truth was hidden for decades by a Whitehall cover-up and a litany of other failures, a scathing report found on Monday.
The long-awaited Infected Blood Inquiry’s report told in withering terms how tens of thousands of patients were “knowingly exposed to unacceptable risks of infection” from the 1970s into the early 1990s with “shattering” impacts on their lives.
People were “cruelly” told they were getting the best treatment available and ministers refused to take responsibility to “save face”.
At least 3,000 out of more than 30,000 people infected with contaminated blood products or through tranfusions have already died and the “number is climbing week by week”.
Inquiry chairman Sir Brian Langstaff said: “Lives, dreams, friendships, families, finances were destroyed.
“This disaster was not an accident.
“The infections happened because those in authority, doctors, the blood services and successive
