Yahoo News
A bid to compensate and support victims of the "worst ever treatment disaster in the history of the NHS" has been blocked by the Government and now looks doomed.
The Contaminated Blood (Support for Infected and Bereaved Persons) Bill passed swiftly through its Lords stages.
But the measure has repeatedly been blocked by Government whips from getting a second reading in the Commons.
And now - on almost certainly the last Friday for backbench Bills before the general election - another shout of "object" prevented it from making further progress.
The Bill, which has the backing of the Haemophilia Society, would establish a compensation package for people who have been infected by contaminated blood, their widows, dependants and carers.
It would also set up a committee to advise on the treatment of haemophilia and a review into the support available for infected people and their families - giving legislative effect to the recommendations of Lord Archer of Sandwell's two-year inquiry into the contaminated blood disaster.
Former disabled people's minister Lord Morris of Manchester, who steered the Bill through the Lords, likened the suffering of haemophiliacs infected by contaminated blood or blood products to the "Black Death".
He said then that haemophilia patients had twice been "infected en masse" by contaminated blood in the "worst ever treatment disaster in the history of the NHS" - with 95% of them infected with hepatitis C and one in four with HIV.
Of the more than 1,200 haemophilia patients infected with HIV only 361, or 29%, were still alive and a "much higher number of deaths among the hepatitis C infected patients is still increasing".
