Rishi Sunak apologises for infected blood scandal on ‘day of shame’

Here’s what some of the victims of the scandal have had to say today.

Mel McKay, from Bridlington in East Yorkshire, who was given transfusion of infected blood during surgery at five-years-old, infected with HIV, said she “definitely” wants prosecutions to be pursued.

“I have not been able to fulfil my dreams and aspirations of becoming a paediatric nurse, but also I’ve not been able to fulfil having a relationship or a family of my own,” she said. 

Ann Swan, from Rowde in Wiltshire, who was told she had hepatitis C after a blood transfusion in 1976 but there is no record of it.

She told Sky: “My records mysteriously disappeared… I wasn’t diagnosed until 1995 when I went into hospital for a comb biopsy and a huge ward of patients emptied out as the day went on and I was the last person in the ward… my GP said ‘oh now we know why you were ill all that time and at least you know what you’re going to die of’, lovely.”

Jackie Britton, from Fareham in Hampshire, contracted Hepatitis C in 1983 after receiving a blood transfusion during childbirth.

She said: “It vindicates my impression that the knowledge was out there, our government ignored it, couldn’t be bothered with it, found it was going to be too expensive – I don’t know what their excuses are but this blatantly in black and white says that they have no excuses, that every person who died from those times on could have been saved.”