Infected blood inquiry: Government declines to give reasons for what went wrong

The counsel for the Department of Health and Social Care for England has declined a request from the chairman of the public inquiry into infected blood to say what had gone wrong in the department’s handling of the supply of blood and blood products from the 1970s, as the inquiry heard closing submissions.1

The inquiry into how thousands of patients, including many with haemophilia, came to be given blood and blood products infected with HIV and hepatitis C finished hearing submissions on 4 February, with a report expected in the autumn.

The infected blood inquiry, the UK’s largest ever statutory inquiry, has seen and heard evidence spanning five decades in its examination of what has been described as the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS. …