Victims of UK's infected blood scandal to start receiving final compensation payments this year
Britain's government says that victims of the U.K.’s infected blood scandal will start receiving their final compensation payments this year
LONDON (AP) — Victims of the U.K.'s infected blood scandal, in which tens of thousands of people were infected by contaminated blood or blood products provided by the public health service, will start receiving their final compensation payments this year, the government said Tuesday.
Officials announced the compensation plans a day after the publication of a damning report that found civil servants and doctors exposed patients to unacceptable risks by giving them blood transfusions or blood products tainted with HIV or hepatitis from the 1970s to the early 1990s.
The report said successive U.K. governments refused to admit wrongdoing and tried to cover up the scandal, in which an estimated 3,000 people died after receiving the contaminated blood or blood products.
In total, the report said about 30,000 people were infected with HIV or hepatitis C, a kind of liver infection, over the period. The scandal is seen as the deadliest disaster in the history of Britain’s state-run National Health Service since its inception in 1948.
