HUNDREDS of people with a genetic disorder could have been spared infection with HIV if England had sought help from Scotland in manufacturing blood products, new documents suggest.

Thought to be the worst treatment disaster in NHS history, the contaminated blood scandal left thousands of patients infected with hepatitis and HIV and caused many early deaths.

Most of those involved had the blood-clotting disorder haemophilia and relied on regular injections of Factor VIII to survive.

Despite repeated warnings about contamination, they continued to be given the product throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

A newly-released letter dated January 1990 shows Scotland could have helped England produce the much-needed blood product Factor VIII for patients there – but government officials rejected the idea and imported large quantities of Factor VIII from risky sources abroad, including US prisoners and drug addicts who were infected with HIV and other diseases.

The document was released under the Freedom of Information Act to campaigner Jason Evans, whose father died in 1993 having contracted hepatitis and HIV.

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In it, Professor John Cash – a former director of the Scottish Blood Transfusion Service – called the decision not to use Scotland’s spare capacity “a grave error of judgment”.

Scotland had been virtually self-sufficient in the manufacture of its Factor VIII at the Protein Fractionation Centre (PFC) in Liberton, a suburb of Edinburgh.

The letter said the Scottish PFC had “very substantial” spare capacity.

Cash said it was assumed that an experiment proving this “would expedite arrangements to give England and Wales assistance – but nothing materialised”. He also wrote of “serious defects in the operational liaison” between the Scottish Home and Health Department and the Department of Health and Social Services in England.

Cash had attempted to “persuade on numerous occasions” those higher up of the need for joint working, but this failed.

Evans, founder of the Factor 8 campaign group, commented: “The statistics say it all – 59 haemophiliacs were infected with HIV in Scotland, as opposed to 1,243 in England, where a high proportion of HIV-infected Factor VIII from the US was used.

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“It fills me with a distinct sense of horror that so many of these people would still be alive if it were not for the total negligence that took place.”

A spokeswoman for the UK Department of Health and Social Care said it is “committed to being open and transparent” with the ongoing public inquiry on the matter, which will resume its public hearings next month.