UK leader Cameron apologizes for tainted blood scandal

London: British Prime Minister David Cameron has apologised to patients who were infected from a contaminated blood scandal during the 1970s and 1980s.

Tainted government blood products and transfusions infected thousands of people with the hepatitis C virus and HIV from 1970 to 1991 -- one of the worst treatment disasters in the history of Britain's public health care system.

Cameron's apology today came after a six-year official inquiry into the scandal was completed. The probe said more should have been done to screen blood and donors, but concluded there were few things that could have been handled differently. It offered a single recommendation: That anyone who had a blood transfusion before 1991 be tested for hepatitis C.

Victims' families reacted angrily, with some calling the probe a "whitewash."