Inquiry slams successive UK governments for failures that killed thousands in infected blood scandal

By SYLVIA HUI
Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — An inquiry has found that British authorities and the country’s public health service committed a “catalogue of failures” and knowingly exposed tens of thousands of patients to deadly infections through contaminated blood and blood products. An estimated 3,000 people in the U.K. are believed to have died and many others were left with lifelong illnesses after receiving blood or blood products tainted with HIV or hepatitis in the 1970s to the early 1990s. The scandal is widely seen as the deadliest disaster in the history of Britain’s state-run National Health Service. Former judge Brian Langstaff, who chaired the inquiry, said on Monday that the disaster was “not an accident,” and found that deliberate attempts were made to conceal it.