Patients to get payout over tainted blood

Thousands of patients who contracted hepatitis C from contaminated NHS blood will be paid compensation, the Health Secretary, John Reid, said yesterday.

His announcement ended a long-running campaign for payments from patients - many of them haemophiliacs - who contracted hepatitis C from NHS blood transfusions.

The Government had previously maintained that it could not know that blood, much of it imported from the United States, was contaminating patients. Heat treatment to deal with contamination was not introduced until the mid-1980s and testing for the disease in donated blood did not begin until 1991.

Mr Reid said he had set up a financial assistance scheme in England because it was "the right thing to do".

Plans have already been laid by the Scottish Executive to pay between £20,000 and £45,000 to people who contracted the disease through contaminated NHS blood.

Those who could claim compensation include people who have been given blood after an accident, during surgery or regular recipients such as haemophiliacs.

Details of the payments have yet to be worked out, the department said.

The president of the Haemophilia Society, Lord Morris, the Labour peer who was Britain's first minister for the disabled, hailed the announcement as a major breakthrough. "The haemophilia community is a small and stricken community," he said. "Because of infection by NHS blood transfusions, well over 1,000 people have died and many now are seriously ill from these infections."