'Day of shame': deadly cover-up of blood scandal finally exposed

PM issues apology after report into biggest ever NHS treatment disaster

- Haroon Siddique & Rachel Hall

The scandal that claimed the lives of 3,000 people treated with contaminated blood was inflamed by a “chilling” NHS and government cover-up , a scathing report has found on what Rishi Sunak declared a “day of shame” .

In the long-awaited conclusion to a five-year public inquiry, Sir Brian Langstaff, who chaired the investigation, said yesterday the calamity could “largely, though not entirely, have been avoided” – but successive governments and others in authority “did not put patient safety first”.

He said the death toll was rising weekly among the 30,000 people infected with hepatitis C, HIV or both from the 1970s through to the early 90s, either from receiving transfusions during surgery or through blood plasma products imported from the US to treat haemophiliacs.

The 2,527-page report contains a litany of examples of unheeded warnings about what would become the biggest treatment disaster in the NHS history. Clinicians and ministers were told about the risks but patients were lied to and infected during trials carried out without their consent or, in the case of children, that of their parents. There were also delays informing patients of their infections, stretching to years in some cases.

“The NHS and successive governments compounded the agony by refusing to accept that wrong had been done,” said Langstaff , after receiving a standing ovation at Westminster Central Hall from more than 1,000 infected and affected people gathered to hear the findings.

“More than that,” he added. “The government repeatedly maintained that people received the best available treatment and that testing of blood donations began as soon as the technology was available. And both claims were untrue.”