‘I spent £500k caring for my wife before she died in the infected blood scandal’

Sandra Gray’s waters broke three months early following a “mishap” while pregnant with her eldest son which caused her stay at Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey for three months. She eventually needed to be induced but doctors had to make incisions to help deliver the baby. She became anaemic due to the blood loss and was given two units of blood.

It was not until more than 10 years later when she repeatedly fell ill and needed tests that Sandra discovered she had in fact been infected with hepatitis C when NHS staff used contaminated blood products for the transfusion. “As the consultant told us the findings he turned to us and said: ‘We don’t expect to see this sort of thing in Hampshire’,” her husband Ken recalls. “I was very upset.

It’s fair to say our relationship with him went downhill from that point.” Known as the silent killer because the initial infection usually has few symptoms, viral hepatitis attacks the liver by causing the immune system to start attacking liver cells, resulting in slow but progressive scarring. It can lead to cirrhosis, liver failure and liver cancer.

The blood-borne infection can also be passed on through sex. Between 1970 and the early 90s, more than 30,000 people in the UK were given blood products from the US – including from drug users, prisoners and prostitutes – infected with HIV and hepatitis C on the NHS. The Infected Blood Inquiry , set up in 2017 to examine what is the biggest scandal in NHS history , will pu.