Thousands of Britons to be paid £100,000 for blood poisoning in the past

Britons who were transfused with blood contaminated with HIV and/or hepatitis C decades ago will be paid one hundred thousand pounds sterling in compensation. This confirmed British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Minimum compensation amount determined Robert Francis QC during the investigation last year. Sunak, speaking in the House of Commons yesterday, May 20, promised to implement Francis’ proposal. “Whatever it costs to implement this scheme, we will pay for it,” he said.

Sunak’s speech came in response to a published investigation that said the number of people affected by blood poisoning was about 30,000, of whom three thousand had already died. All of them received contaminated drugs imported from the United States between the 1970s and 1990s. They required transfusions of blood or its components due to accidents, during operations and childbirth, as well as for the treatment of hemophilia.

Sunak called the day the report was published a “day of shame,” and the British media characterized the incident as “the biggest disaster in the history of British health care.” Former British Prime Minister Theresa May ordered the investigation to begin in 2017. The report contains 2,527 pages.

“Compensation will not restore anyone’s health or lost children. But the government must solve this problem financially and recognize all the wages, pensions and mortgages lost over the years,” says Richard Warwick, 58, who was infected with HIV and hepatitis C during an experimental treatment for hemophilia when he was still a schoolboy.

For now, writes The Guardian, about four thousand victims and partners of the victims received compensation promised by the authorities.