Victims of UK’s infected blood scandal to start receiving final compensation payments this year

By SYLVIA HUI
Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s government says thousands of victims of the U.K.’s infected blood scandal will start receiving their final compensation payments this year. The scandal is seen as the deadliest disaster in the history of Britain’s state-run National Health Service. Officials announced the plans a day after the publication of a report that found civil servants and doctors exposed patients to unacceptable risks by giving them blood transfusions or blood products tainted with HIV or hepatitis from the 1970s to the early 1990s. The report said successive U.K. governments tried to cover up the scandal.