Confirmed horrifying scandal

Worst treatment sandal in HNS history (so far).

Infected blood report

Rishi Sunak

“a day of shame for the British state”

“Today’s report shows a decades-long moral failure at the heart of our national life – from the National Health Service to the Civil Service, to ministers in successive governments, at every level the people and institutions in which we place our trust failed in the most harrowing and devastating way.

“They failed the victims and their families and they failed this country.”

“moral failure at the heart of our national life” in which doctors, civil servants and ministers had put reputations above patient safety.

“On behalf of this and every government stretching back to the 1970s, I am truly sorry.”

The final report concluded

Health service and governments took part in a “chilling” cover-up, as they “closed ranks” to hide the truth, even destroying documents to keep patients in the dark.

Sir Brian Langstaff

the “horrifying” scandal could and should have been avoided, but a “catalogue of failures” led to “calamity”.

“It will be astonishing to anyone who reads this report that these events could have happened in the UK

…that a level of suffering which it is difficult to comprehend, still less understand, has been caused to so many”.

victims of the scandal “have been forced into a decades-long battle for the truth

“Successive governments claimed that patients had received the best medical treatment available at the time, and that blood screening had been introduced at the earliest opportunity. Both claims were untrue.

“Standing back, and viewing the response of the NHS and of government overall, the answer to the question ‘was there a cover-up?’ is that there has been.

“Not in the sense of a handful of people plotting in an orchestrated conspiracy to mislead, but in a way that was more subtle, more pervasive and more chilling in its implications.

“In this way there has been a hiding of much of the truth.”

tragedy “was not an accident”.