Infected Blood scandal: How UK failed on a global scale

The inquiry into the infected blood scandal has issued its final damning conclusions, prompting Rishi Sunak to issue a “wholehearted and unequivocal” apology on what he called “a day of shame for the British state.”

The infected blood scandal is not unique to the UK.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s many other countries also passed along contaminated blood to thousands of unsuspecting people.

But in most of those places, the reckoning came earlier – with compensation payouts and even criminal convictions secured years, and sometimes decades, ago.

Opportunities missed by successive governments of all parties here in the UK.