Victims of infected blood scandal will each receive {pound}100 000 compensation

Around 4000 victims of the UK’s infected blood scandal will each receive an interim compensation payment of £100 000 (€118 000; $120 000) after decades of campaigning, the government has announced.The tax-free payments will go to those who have been infected with HIV or hepatitis C and to the bereaved partners of those who have died, and this will not affect any financial benefit support they receive.The payments were recommended by Brian Langstaff, who chairs the public inquiry into a debacle that has been described as the greatest treatment disaster in the history of the NHS. Thousands of people with haemophilia became infected through contaminated blood products in the 1970s and ’80s after the government, despite knowing of the risk of infection, continued to buy from US commercial companies.1These companies made the products from the pooled plasma of paid donors, including statistically high risk groups such as prisoners and homeless…
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