Contaminated blood

Few would disagree with the verdict of Lord Winston that the use of contaminated blood in transfusions and blood products was "the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS". Thousands of people in the UK, including an estimated 4000 in Scotland, were given contaminated blood in the 1970s and 1980s. As a result, many, including more than 2000 haemophiliacs in the UK, have since died from either hepatitis C or HIV, and there is a fear that others remain undiagnosed. Campaigners for a public inquiry into what went wrong have argued for many years that if this scale of carnage had occurred in an accident, there would have been a full-scale public inquiry long ago.