Tainted blood victims need real help now

Cruelty does not have to be a positive act. It can show itself in omission, in callously allowing matters to take their course.

this is the case with the tainted blood scandal. every four days on average, another innocent person dies in the uK from the effects of being treated in the 1970s and 80s with imported blood products contaminated with hepatitis C and HIV.

this macabre statistic means that some 200 affected people alive today will be dead by the time the current public inquiry into the affair ends. Much good these hearings will have done them – and as many as 3,000 others, many of them haemophiliacs, who have already died as a result of transfusions administered by the NHS.

the treatment of these victims over 40 years fully merits the description of national disgrace. right-thinking people unacquainted with this case will imagine that the thousands of victims were paid compensation long ago. But, appallingly, they were not.

Indeed, the battle for compensation has dragged on since 1987. Some victims have been palmed off with ‘ex-gratia payments’ but no official compensation. Amounts can be just £5,000 a year.

How can a civilised country abandon its own citizens, grievously injured while in the care of its health service, leaving some on the breadline? Ireland has spent more than £1billion settling claims from its sufferers.

yet here, the wheels of state bureaucracy grind mercilessly on, the potential compensation bill conveniently reducing with each passing week.

Seven party leaders have written to the Prime Minister demanding full compensation be paid now. that this is even a matter for debate is a source of shame for us all.