After years of despair, infected blood victims like me will be compensated. Now identifying the guilty | Andy Evans

FAt the end of the day, people know we’re not conspiracy theorists. We’re not wildly crazy, and we haven’t been barking up the wrong tree. “Go away, live your life, it was all a mistake,” is a refrain that we, infected blood campaigners and victims, have been hearing for decades. But it turns out it wasn’t “just a mistake” that more than 30,000 patients received blood contaminated with HIV and hepatitis C. And now, finally, the lies, the closing ranks and the blatant conspiracy to destroy justice for the victims to twist. has been exposed.

Brian Langstaff’s report is everything we have said for the last forty years, prepared by a High Court judge and signed off at a public inquiry. His findings – that victims have been abandoned by ‘successive governments’ who ignored warnings of contagion and engaged in a ‘cover-up’ – are seismic.

If I had heard these things as a child with HIV, I might have been less afraid to come out of the shadows. These viruses carry a stigma. I hope that the victims and their families will now feel able to face their experiences and proudly proclaim that they have been wronged as part of the biggest treatment scandal in the history of the NHS.

When I was 16, I developed full-blown AIDS. For four years I was in and out of hospital with infections, including pneumonia. I lost a lot of weight and was given a nasogastric tube. My parents were told several times by doctors that they should consider letting me go because the doctors could not continue to treat me. Every infection threatened to kill me. When I look at my own children today, I think of how my parents must have felt when they knew they had to tell me I had contracted HIV. I can’t imagine the worries they must have lived with.

I met my wife during a mourning weekend for infected blood victims; her brother was a hemophiliac who died after receiving infected blood. Our union is happy that we have emerged from the scandal, but it continues to affect our family. To conceive our children, we were forced to undergo sperm washing and multiple rounds of IVF. Another layer of cost, stress and trauma we can add to our lives.

I am pleased that the impact on families is recognized in the compensation scheme open to victims today; This was long awaited and should have happened a long time ago. Victims can submit an application, but also those indirectly affected – parents, siblings and children. The plan looks promising, but as always the devil is in the details, and our work to ensure those most affected are cared for is not yet done.

Many people in the community believe that criminal charges should be the next consideration, and I tend to agree with them. The Langstaff report is only a cursory sketch: we really need to get to the heart of who exactly was to blame at each specific stage.

Initially I felt that the responsibility should be placed squarely on the British licensing authorities, who were allowing American products into Britain. By the mid-1970s, there was no doubt that hepatitis was transmitted through blood products, and yet they continued to license those products. They now have to answer questions.

And former Health Secretary Kenneth Clarke has been forced to explain his role, saying there was “no conclusive evidence that AIDS is transmitted by blood products”. Wouldn’t you be cautious if you heard such warnings? His comments on the research are clear lacked respect for the victims. It was absolutely disgusting and re-traumatizing for the entire community to see him sitting with his arms folded, complaining about the questions being asked of him.

And then questions must of course be asked of the civil service and of the civil servants who have passed on the wrong information to ministers over the years. There must be fundamental changes in the civil service. And if something like this cannot happen again, we must establish a deterrent. If that means criminal charges and people going to jail, then so be it.

Ultimately, the responsibility for the delay in justice lies with the Prime Minister. Rishi Sunak has apologized to the victims, and I accept that apology. I don’t think for a moment that he wrote the speech delivered yesterday itself, but the very fact that our Prime Minister has now stood up in Parliament and exposed the governments past and present for the mistakes they have committed is quite immense.

If you look around the world, you will see that many other countries contained their own blood scandals decades ago. If British victims like me had been recognized earlier, I might have been able to do something other than campaigning with the time I had left. Justice delayed in this case is justice denied. As time goes by, we lose more and more victims – as well as those who could be responsible for this scandal.

After decades of living with these diseases, I will never be the strongest man in the world. Treatment for hepatitis C was equivalent to long-term chemotherapy and completely destroyed my body and mind. I take twice the recommended dose of antidepressants, and will probably stay that way for the rest of my life.

My story speaks to the devastation of this scandal because it is just one of many stories. Other people have had it just as bad, or even worse. After years of denial, distraction and distraction, it’s time to set the record straight.

• Andy Evans is chairman of the campaign group Tainted Blood. As told to Lucy Pasha-Robinson

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