“A day of shame” for the British state

Mr Martindale is one of more than 30,000 Britons who were infected with HIV and hepatitis C through treatments in the National Health Service (NHS) in the 1970s and 1980s; around 3,000 of them, including his brother, have died. Mr Martindale was also the first victim to testify at the public inquiry into the infected-blood scandal, which was set up after decades of delays in 2017. And on May 20th this year he was in a conference centre in central London to hear Sir Brian Langstaff, the chair of the inquiry, present his final report.