UK PM issues apology for covering up the contaminated blood crisis

May 21, London On behalf of the previous administrations, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak expressed regret for the contaminated blood incident and proclaimed it a “day of national shame.”

Sunak made the following statement to the House of Commons on Monday after the inquiry’s publication: “I want to make a whole-hearted and unequivocal apology for this terrible injustice.”

According to the Xinhua news agency, he also pledged to provide “comprehensive compensation” to everyone impacted by the incident and those who were afflicted.

“We will cover all expenses associated with implementing this plan,” he said, noting that specifics would be revealed on Tuesday.

A devastating 2,527-page investigation released earlier on Monday came to the conclusion that the UK’s tainted blood crisis, which has resulted in over 3,000 fatalities, “could largely, though not entirely, have been avoided.”

The “calamity,” in which tens of thousands of patients with hemophilia and other bleeding disorders contracted HIV and hepatitis viruses after receiving contaminated blood or blood products between the 1970s and early 1990s, was attributed to “a catalogue of failures” by successive governments and medical professionals, according to the report.

“It may also be surprising that the questions about why so many deaths and infections occurred have not had answers before now,” the study said.

The incident has been dubbed “the worst treatment disaster” in the National Health Service’s (NHS) history in Britain.

The study also revealed that the NHS and the government had “hidden much of the truth” in order “to save face and to save expense.”

Such a ruse was “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,” it said.

A clotting factor that was imported from the US and used blood from high-risk, compensated donors was connected to the controversy.

In 2017, the government said that a public investigation would be held throughout the UK to look into the circumstances that resulted in people receiving tainted blood or blood products.

In 2022, around 4,000 affected people and their grieving partners who were enrolled in the nation’s contaminated blood support programs received interim compensation payments from the government in the amount of 100,000 British pounds, or over $127,000.