BAD BLOOD

30,000 infected with HIV and hepatitis C ... 3,000 believed dead ... a decades-long fight for justice ... £10billion owed in compo ... and today, a truly shocking report into ...

- LIZZY BUCHAN

AT a solemn vigil in Westminster, campaigners last night observed a minute's silence for the victims of the infected blood scandal.

Ahead of the Infected Blood Inquiry report today, they remembered the 3,000 people thought to have died after being given blood, which was often taken from prisoners in US jails and never screened, infected with HIV and hepatitis C.

They remembered victims such as Amanda Patton's brother Simon Cummings, who died aged 38 in 1996, after being infected with HIV due to treatment for haemophilia.

Ms Patton, a garden designer from Surrey, said: "He phoned me in September of that year and said, 'I've good news and bad news.

"The bad news is that they give me between two and six months [to live], but the good news is, I don't have to go to the dentist again. It was just typical of him, absolutely typical.

"People say that time heals, but it doesn't. What happened to him was so awful. All those years he was denied, it's all the 'might have beens' as well as everything else."

Martin Reid, from Insch, Aberdeenshire, was infected with hepatitis C as a child, again while receiving treatment for haemophilia.