In Britain today the final report is due out from the investigation into one of the biggest scandals in health care, related to contaminated blood, reported BNR.
About 3,000 people who received contaminated blood from the National Health Service in the 1970s and 1980s have already died, official statistics show, but the true number is likely to be much higher. These are mainly those who died after contracting HIV or hepatitis C from treatment made from blood plasma or blood transfusion. More than 30,000 National Health Service patients have received contaminated products made from blood from high-risk donors in the United States.
British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps told the BBC on Sunday that people affected by the scandal had waited too long for answers. Shapps said he could not confirm the scale of victim compensation after it was leaked from the report that it could reach more than £10 billion. It was only in 2017, under Theresa May, that a formal inquiry into the scandal was organized, after years of campaigning by victims.
Following the inquiry's advice, in 2022 the government made interim payments of £100,000 each to around 4,000 survivors and their partners. A charity has reported a surge in demand for hepatitis C tests following analysis released by the BBC that around 1,750 people in the UK are living with undiagnosed hepatitis C infection after transfusions of contaminated blood.