'Undertaker refused to do my husband's funeral'

A woman whose husband was given contaminated blood has said an undertaker refused to handle his funeral.

Karen Millard, who is from Northampton, watched her husband die of liver failure brought on by the infected blood.

Thousands of people were infected with HIV and hepatitis C by contaminated blood products used in the NHS.

An inquiry report published this week said there had been a "chilling cover-up".

Karen Millard was a young mother with a four-year-old daughter and a baby son when her husband, Russell, died.

He was a haemophiliac who had contracted HIV and hepatitis C from blood he was given as part of his treatment.

Speaking to BBC Radio Northampton, Ms Millard said: "When Russell was ill, when he passed away, we had to say that he passed away from liver failure, which was true, but the liver failure was caused by the hep C and the HIV status.

"One funeral company wouldn't touch it.

"They wanted to cremate him, he did not want to be cremated and they said he needed to be cremated because of the infection, we did finally get a funeral company that would do it."

When Ms Millard went to say her last goodbye to her husband, she discovered that the infection had taken away his dignity: "My last vision of Russell, when I went to see him in the chapel of rest, he was in a plastic bag."

Russell's son, Dan, said that the death of his father had "ripped us apart".

He added: "For years and years, my grandmother blamed herself because she was giving my dad the treatment when he was a child."

Dan heard Rishi Sunak's apology for the scandal in the House of Commons yesterday, but has mixed feelings about it.

He said: "You feel like it's just a written statement that he's reading out.

"We feel great now that the public and everybody knows that what happened to dad and what happened to thousands of others wasn't their fault and the government did know about it, and, as proven yesterday, there was a cover-up."

A compensation package is being announced by the government, but Ms Millard said the issue for her is not the money: "It's more the justice, it's more them owning up and saying 'yes, we did cover up, yes, we did do wrong', we want a heartfelt apology."

Dan Millard said: "They could announce that we'll get millions, but, for me, I've got all these memories that I should have had with my dad and no amount of money is going to bring that back."

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