Today marked the first day of the Infected Blood Inquiry here in the UK. It’s not typically front-page news and so you may not know the background to the story, but during the 1970s and 80s, some patients who received blood or plasma transfusions were infected with viruses such as HIV or hepatitis. Many (but certainly not all) of the victims were haemophiliacs – one was my Dad (here’s an old blog post about how it shaped me).

There are plenty of stories about the launch of the inquiry (BBC, Guardian, HuffPost to link to just a few), so there’s no point in going over what has already been said.

What did strike a chord, however, is that the proceedings began with a commemoration of the victims and their families (there’s a video here). I didn’t realise this was happening today and am not involved in any way, but it obviously got me thinking about my Dad and so I decided to dig out a few pictures and put up this post to mark the day and pay tribute to him.