Infected blood scandal: government knew of contaminated plasma ‘long before it admitted it’

Exclusive: files at national archives suggest different version of events

A minister privately expressed concerns that Aids was being transmitted by contaminated blood products while the government publicly insisted there was no conclusive evidence", newly uncovered documents from 1983 show.

Among the victims of the contaminated blood scandal, which is the subject of a public inquiry, were 1,240 British haemophilia patients, most of whom have since died. They were infected with HIV in the 1980s through an untreated blood product known as Factor VIII.