As the inquiry publishes it final report, the chancellor is under pressure to find £10bn to put right a longstanding injustice

The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, will come under pressure to stay true to his word and sign off on immediate compensation payments totalling up to £10bn to victims of the contaminated blood scandal when the long-awaited final report on the affair is published on Monday.

The scandal is described as the worst treatment disaster in NHS history, with more than 3,000 people having died as a result of receiving contaminated blood products in the 1970s and 1980s. It is estimated that, even today, a person infected during the scandal dies every four days.

The ‘blood friends’ swap stories and medical advice to help one another feel unburdened by their experiences

Victims of the infected blood inquiry are joining forces to share stories and support.

Sue Wathen, Joan Edgington and Nicola Leahey were diagnosed with hepatitis C after struggling through years of unexplained symptoms that were dismissed by doctors.

It is the NHS’s worst treatment disaster – with 30,000 patients infected. Two survivors, Ade Goodyear and Andy Evans, explain why it took so long for it to be brought to light

Ade Goodyear was 15 when he was told he had contracted HIV. Like about 30,000 other NHS patients – including more than 300 children – who were given blood transfusions or commercial blood products before 2019, he was infected by contaminated blood. Some patients got HIV and hepatitis C from blood transfusions after childbirth or other medical procedures. Ade was infected with HIV at the medical centre of his school.

Pupils at his Treloar’s college, which had a specialist haemophilia unit, were among those given injections of a blood plasma product called factor VIII concentrate. Concerns had been raised a decade before by the World Health Organization because it was a commercial product that mixed plasma from tens of thousands of often high-risk donors. If one had an infection such as HIV, it could contaminate the whole batch.