None of NHS scandals I’ve written about for decades matches scale of this tragedy

Colin Smith, a boy who had developed a bruise on his knee a few months after his birth, was the first case i wrote about.

This indicated that he had inherited haemophilia – the blood-clotting disorder known as the ‘royal disease’ after it had swept through Queen Victoria’s family.

Soon Colin was making regular trips to hospital for infusions of the blood-clotting agent factor Viii, intended to ensure that he could live a normal life. instead, it killed him. He was infected with HiV from a contaminated batch of factor Viii, made in the U.S. with blood from some of the world’s highest-risk donors, such as drug addicts and prostitutes.

After months of chronic chest infections, fevers and diarrhoea, Colin died in 1990 aged seven. He weighed just 13lb (6kg).

This story, which i told in these pages 14 years ago, is incredibly sad. Yet almost 3,000 more Britons have died, often in a similar manner, while thousands more lives have been wrecked by debilitating and deadly diseases.

The infected blood scandal is the worst patient-healthcare scandal in the history of the nHS, exposing the darkest reality beneath its deified facade.

Britain, of course, was not the only country affected. The U.S. branded it ‘the haemophilia holocaust’. France prosecuted ministers and jailed officials. in Canada and Japan it resulted in charges and convictions.

But in our country, no one has been punished. Some heartless medics, shameless bureaucrats and spineless politicians responded to this massacre of the innocents by covering their tracks, destroying documents and rebuffing desperate pleas for help from sick and often impoverished citizens.

The state must now take ownership of its lethal misdeeds. Yesterday it was confirmed this betrayal was not just a patientsafety failure of grotesque proportions, but an avoidable tragedy followed by ‘downright deception’ of the public.

More than four decades after the first horror stories started to emerge, Sir Brian langstaff’s damning report exposes the shocking litany of official coverup, deceit and incompetence.

‘People put their faith in doctors and in the Government to keep them safe, and their trust was betrayed,’ said Sir Brian.

For me, it is particularly poignant because, as a child, i had a blood-clotting disorder and spent time in hospital with boys with haemophilia.

The odds dictate many of my fellow patients back then must now be dead.

none of the health scandals i have written about in many years of covering the nHS matches the scale of this tragedy, nor the level of callous deceit and failure, which led to more than 30,000 people being infected with HiV, hepatitis C and other deadly diseases between 1970 and 1991.

i was utterly shocked when i began to discover the lack of concern shown towards the people affected by it.

Take Colin, whose doctors did not mention to his parents the risks involved in the product they were giving him. Yet the inquiry revealed that the specialist treating him was fully aware of the dangers.

nor did doctors mention – until three years after his death – that in addition to HiV, Colin had been infected with hepatitis C. That was despite the risk that this disease could be easily passed to other members of his family if they came into contact with his blood.

in his final months, Colin’s parents had to use a sheepskin to lift their beloved boy, such was the pain tormenting his shrunken body. After his death, they were told to burn his mattress. no explanation, no counselling, no apology.

Sir Brian’s devastating report makes clear that it was ‘apparent’ by 1982 that diseases such as hepatitis and whatever was causing Aids could be spread by unscreened blood products. Yet doctors continued to give them to patients.

This inquiry is a bittersweet victory for campaigners who have spent up to 40 years ‘shouting into the wind’.

Joseph Peaty is one of few survivors among 120 pupils infected at Treloar, a special boarding school in Hampshire that catered for haemophiliacs and where boys were used as guinea pigs in secret trials to test blood products, despite those in

‘Massacre of the innocents’ ‘Boys were used as guinea pigs’

charge knowing the risks of infection with deadly diseases. More than 70 people who were pupils there have now died of Aids and hepatitis.

Joseph, who was infected with these diseases, told me how, now aged 58, he has lost the best years of his life fighting for compensation and justice.

The self-serving perpetrators of this cover-up, which has corroded trust in crucial institutions, should have been shamed and brought to book years ago.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has apologised for the state’s moral failure, yet it is nine years since David Cameron apologised in Parliament and pledged recompense after a Scottish inquiry branded the tainted blood saga ‘the stuff of nightmares’ – nine years in which the horror story that shames the British state continued.

There now needs to be real action and honesty, and a ruthless focus on ending these sickening state cover-ups and failures. it is time to bring to an end the hell endured for so long by Colin Smith’s family and so many others like them.