Three decades after being infected with hepatitis C - and being told he should be grateful he didn't have HIV - hospital finally apologises after man's death

“A member of staff informed Ray that he had hepatitis C but to be grateful that he didn't have HIV — Ray did not even know he had been tested. There were other people around when he was told and no support or advice — or frankly any compassion — was offered”.

That ‘aside comment’ in front of other patients was the way Dr Raymond Walmsley found out he had been infected with hepatitis C after receiving infected blood through a transfusion, remembers his widow.

“Ray did not know that he had been tested for hepatitis C when he was nonchalantly told that he had the virus. He cannot therefore have consented to testing,” Louise Walmsley, Ray’s wife, told the Infected Blood Inquiry in her evidence back in 2022.

It’s now been two years on from giving that evidence, six years since her ‘soulmate’s’ death aged just 53, and just over 33 years since Ray discovered the blood he had been given was contaminated with hepatitis C. At last, a coroner has ruled that his death came as a result of the infected blood and ‘could have been avoided’.

St Bartholomew’s Hospital, which gave Dr Walmsley the lethal infected blood has, apologised ‘for the first time’ to him and his family. That apology, all too late, has only come indirectly to the family through the press, his widow says, after the trust was approached for comment by the Manchester Evening News after the inquest findings and Louise's inquiry evidence.

READ MORE: 'It's astonishing that this could happen in this country' - Beloved 'soulmate' was given the infected blood that killed him

In 2022, following her husband’s sudden death in September 2018, Louise Walmsley gave evidence to the Infected Blood Inquiry. Louise demanded an apology, not only for all the victims of the tragedy,