What happened in the UK's infected blood scandal? Inquiry report will be revealed on Monday

LONDON (AP) — The final report of the U.K.'s infected blood inquiry will be published Monday, nearly six years after it began looking into how tens of thousands of people contracted HIV or hepatitis from transfusions of tainted blood and blood products in the 1970s and 1980s.

The scandal is widely seen as the deadliest to afflict Britain’s state-run National Health Service since its inception in 1948, with around 3,000 people believed to have died as a result of being infected with the HIV virus and hepatitis, an inflammation of the liver.

The report is expected to criticize pharmaceutical firms and medical practitioners, civil servants and politicians, though many have already died given the passage of time. It’s also set to pave the way to a huge compensation bill that the British government will be under pressure to rapidly pay out.