Cruellest betrayal: Victims knowingly exposed to risks

Infected blood patients were not told of dangers and survivors robbed of years of healthy lives

- Daniel Keane, Nicholas Cecil and Rachael Burford

THE biggest treatment scandal in NHS history should 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 today.

The long-awaited infected blood inquiry's report told how tens of thousands of patients were "knowingly exposed to unacceptable risks of infection" from the Seventies into the early Nineties 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 transfusions 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 governments, did not put patient safety first." Instead, they were given contaminated blood products including Factor VIII, mainly shipped from the United States, from donors who often included prisoners and drug users.

Thousands of families across the UK were impacted by hepatitis and HIV infections with the "physical and psychological pain, stigma and grief still being felt today".