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Mr AK, speaking of his haemophilia centre said: "They were out of their depth...it just seemed a bit weird, the director of haemophilia was trying to give us this drug [AZT] no-one knew very much about as a trial and it was just all very scary."

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A witness described how "It took about six years before [my husband] saw a Virologist and to find out how far the HIV virus had progressed. We were always worried as we didn't know what was happening."

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A witness described how the Genito-urinary and Sexual Health Clinic served all HIV patients with the exception of the haemophilia patients with HIV, who were ring-fenced within the haemophilia centre. This meant that her husband did not have the benefit of discussing treatment options with HIV specialists.

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A witness was infected with HIV in 1981 but his parents were not informed of his infection until 1988, when he was 14.

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A witness was concerned about the lack of specialist input into his HIV care, stating "Just because his haemophilia patients had developed HIV he suddenly hadn't developed a specialism in HIV himself".

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Brian Ahearn was concerned about his treatment for Hepatitis C: He stated that following his diagnosis "I should have been referred to a hepatologist straight away".

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Professor Charles Hay stated that in the late 1990s and early 2000s there was only had one hepatologist at the hospital, which was common in the NHS at this time. The hepatologist would offer advice and refer the patient back to the doctor who made the referral for further management.

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Robert James told the Inquiry: "the way haemophilia doctors saw us ... we were their 'children'. Because it was predominantly a young person's disease at the time because older haemophiliacs had died of bleeding before we had cryo, there was an awful lot of young children, and for haemophilia doctors, they saw us like that. And so they would just not refer us on to an appropriate immunologist".

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Robert James told the Inquiry that Drs Mark Winter and Has Dasani were good at keeping up to date with medical knowledge in the field.

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Mr AM spoke highly of the haemophilia doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital. He expressed the view that haemophiliacs should have been systematically tested and a look-back exercise should have been carried out to ascertain those infected from the whole blood community. Specialist clinics with experts in HIV and hepatitis should have been developed.

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Jackie Britton described her experience at two hospitals. At one hospital "you fought for your six-monthly scans, which could take eight months, and then it was a wait to see your consultant" and contrasted this with her later experience: "with King's [College Hospital] you have the scan in the morning, you see the clinic in the afternoon."

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Michelle Tolley described the differences in care at two hospitals:"you have your scan, you might wait three or four weeks for a letter and then you see your hepatologist, if you're lucky, and then you get sent off for bloods ... not like at King's [College Hospital], where you have your scan in the morning, your bloods, and then you see the person in the afternoon. That's all done and dusted."

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A paper containing an economic analaysis of screening blood donations against Hepatitis C referred to a research programme a research programme had begun to evaluate the use of interferon therapy in non-A non-B Hepatitis.

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Letter from Dr Dr K Bywater to Dr Kenneth Calman stated that although Interferon treatment was licensed for use in January 1995 it had been used in specialist centres in the UK and around the world for the previous 5 years.

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The effectiveness of interferon against Hepatitis C was demonstrated for the first time by Dr Jay Hoofnagle.

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Combination therapy was the mainstay of treatment from 2000, with interferon being part of the combination until around 2014.

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Interferon alpha monotherapy was the only treatment licensed for use in treatment of Hepatitis C in the UK.

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Interferon was used in some specialist centres (on a named person basis) for some five years prior to licensing.

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Direct-acting antivirals became available for treatment for Hepatitis C.

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Pegylated interferon was used as monotherapy in the UK from June 2002 and was deemed to provide better results.

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