Report due to decide on blood charges

A REPORT into whether health officials should be prosecuted over Scotland’s hepatitis C scandal was due to be released today.

A senior Strathclyde detective has been drawing up a report into the scandal which saw hundreds of Scots haemophiliacs contract hepatitis C after they were treated with contaminated blood products.

The Crown Office will now have to consider the report and decide whether it warrants a criminal investigation.

If it decides to proceed with an investigation, everyone from doctors to former health ministers could be questioned.

Similar inquiries in Canada, France and Japan have led to senior health figures, and even government ministers, facing trial.

Haemophilia is a blood condition where people are missing an essential clotting factor, putting them at risk of bleeding uncontrollably.

Treatment involves repeat injections of blood containing the clotting agent .

The Scottish scandal dates back to the 1970s and 1980s when contaminated blood products used in transfusions for haemophiliacs left 500 people with hepatitis C and other blood-borne viruses.