GPs to help NHS find more infected blood victims

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GPs in England are to help the NHS find more undiagnosed patients affected by the contaminated blood scandal. It is thought thousands of people could have been exposed to the hepatitis C virus through contaminated blood transfusions in the 1970s, 80s and 90s; part of a scandal which affected more than 30,000 people in the UK. From June, patients signing up to a GP practice, who received a blood transfusion before 1996, will be offered a test for hepatitis C. The BBC revealed the scale of undiagnosed cases last year, as people with life-threatening liver damage caused by the virus over many years continue to be identified.

'Horrifying impact'

Hepatitis C can now be treated by modern anti-viral drugs to eliminate the virus for most patients. But if it goes undetected and undiagnosed there may not be any noticeable symptoms for some time and it can infect the liver and cause serious damage, leaving the organ beyond repair.

Family photo Maureen Arkley was diagnosed with hepatitis C more than 40 years after being infected in a blood transfusion

Maureen Arkley, who died last year, was diagnosed with hepatitis C and cirrhosis of the liver in 2023, more than 40 years after she had an operation involving multiple blood transfusions. These were on her medical records but she was not told by her GP or anyone in the NHS that she could have been exposed to the virus. BBC News highlighted her case as one of many people let down by the lack of testing following the infected blood scandal. It is one of the biggest treatment disasters in NHS history - 3,000 people who were infected with HIV and hepatitis C after being given contaminated blood products have died. Many of the victims were haemophiliacs, who were given infected blood products as part of their treatment. Many thousands more were given transfusions using contaminated blood after accidents, emergencies or childbirth. Maureen died in February 2024, five months after her diagnosis and 47 years after a blood transfusion infected her. "The end was utterly horrific, she weighed less than four stone when she died," her daughter Victoria told the BBC.

The inside story of a council held to ransom in cyber-attack

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BBC A virus hidden in an email attachment spread though Redcar and Cleveland's computer network

In the early hours an IT engineer raced into work through the dark, wintery streets of Redcar in north-east England. The dash was prompted by a worrying alert about the council's computer network, and he was soon hurriedly shutting down servers to try to halt the spread of a virus. It was too late. Hackers had scrambled Redcar and Cleveland Council's IT systems and would soon demand payment to restore it. The cyber-attack in February 2020 caused chaos, disrupting everything from bin collections to social services and decisions about how to keep vulnerable children safe. "I got a phone call to say: we've been hit," recalls Mary Lanigan, then leader of the council. "The destruction of our systems was total." In recent weeks, cyber-criminals have targeted major retailers including M&S and the Co-Op, leading to empty shelves and breaches of customer data. But the former head of the National Cyber Safety Centre (NCSC), Ciaran Martin, said his "biggest cyber-security worry" was the threat of simultaneous attacks on public services, like councils and hospitals, which had the potential to "wreck lives". The BBC has been investigating how the attack on Redcar and Cleveland unfolded, what it took to get things back to normal and the impact on local people.

Mary Lanigan said the impact of the cyber-attack had been "devastating"

In the days before Saturday 8 February 2020, an email with a seemingly innocuous attachment arrived in a council inbox. Hidden inside was a piece of malicious software that would lie dormant in the council's network until it was activated remotely. Within a few hours of that activation it had spread throughout the computer system, locking staff out and scrambling files. By 11:00 GMT on Saturday, local residents began to notice the council website was offline. "There wasn't a lot we could do," Mrs Lanigan said about efforts to stop the virus. "You had to be practical, so it was actually getting more phones in there so that people could ring us." News was spreading, but Mrs Lanigan, who lost her position in the 2023 local elections, claims she received pressure from council officials and central government not to speak out. The council declined to be interviewed about the attack but said there had been no pressure or instruction not to speak publicly, either at the time or since. What Mrs Lanigan did not say in 2020, but admits now, was the council was dealing with a crisis. "It was devastating," she said. "Devastating for us, for the staff, for the public and for everybody else." They had lost the ability to share information with police and the NHS, while social services and elderly care services were knocked out, she said. "Even somebody ringing up and saying 'my bin hasn't been emptied' wasn't dealt with."

Cyber Siege: From Russia to Redcar The inside story of a council in north east England was held to ransom by a dangerous gang of cyber-criminals. Watch now on BBC iPlayer (UK Only)

By the morning of Monday 10 February IT staff were desperately going from desk to desk, placing infected computers in a growing pile. "When we saw how much damage had been caused we realised it would probably take weeks, maybe years to do," said IT worker Ben Saunders. At the same time, experts at the NCSC - part of GCHQ - were considering the council's plea for help. Mr Martin, who was the NCSC's chief executive at the time, said it was "unusually serious". "If a council are telling you they are worried about their ability to run services for vulnerable children, you take that very seriously." It was feared social workers, tasked with keeping young people safe, would struggle to do their jobs without access to the online records they relied on to help inform difficult decisions. In what Mr Martin called an "unusual" step, NCSC officers were deployed to Redcar. On Tuesday 11 February – the second working day after the attack - hackers made their ransom demand. The exact figure has never been made public, but Mr Martin said that, based on similar attacks, it was likely to have been in the "low single figure millions of US dollars". The current government is considering a ban on the public sector paying ransoms to hackers but, while it is the guidance, there was no formal ban in place in 2020. Regardless, Mrs Lanigan was in no mind to cough up. "I'm a Yorkshire woman and the thing being about that is there was no way I was paying any ransom to anybody." The following day, Wednesday 12 February, the government held a Cobra meeting, designed to co-ordinate the response to major emergencies. "That's when you realised just how serious it was," the former council leader said. "It wasn't just some hacker sat in a bedroom having a play with computers."

Paul had to quit his job to look after Clare when the council systems they relied on were hit

While the system was being rebuilt, the council turned the clocks back and returned to using paper and pen. Many functions ground to a halt or were dramatically slowed down. Redcar husband and wife Paul and Clare were "very reliant on the council" at the time. Clare needed support from care workers and specialist equipment to help with a debilitating condition called functional neurological disorder. "You'd be waiting on the phone for hours," Paul said. "When people were coming it was handwritten notes, so the systems weren't getting updated. It was a real nightmare." The couple waited many months before they got the support they needed. In the meantime, Paul had quit his job to care for his wife. All the while staff continued to work on getting the council back online and within a few weeks a temporary system for social services had been restored. By May 2020 the council said it was still only back to 90%, with the system taking 10 months to be fully restored. "Some of it was able to be recovered; a lot of it was needed to be built from scratch," said Mr Saunders. "It was a very meticulous, very long process." Yet it took several years before evidence emerged suggesting who was behind the cyber-attack. In February 2022, one of the world's most prolific ransomware gangs, the Russia-based Conti Group, fell apart. After Russia invaded its neighbour, pro-Ukrainian hackers leaked the group's private messages and data, revealing details of some of the most dangerous cyber-criminals. A year later, in February 2023, a group of Russian hackers were sanctioned by UK and US government over a string of attacks on businesses, schools and councils, including Redcar and Cleveland.

Getty Images From social services to bin collections, almost all council services were disrupted by the cyber-attack

Apple boosts India's factory hopes - but a US-China deal could derail plans

2 hours ago Share Save Nikhil Inamdar • @Nik_inamdar BBC News, London Share Save

Reuters Apple is shifting most of its production of iPhones headed to the US from China to India

Just as India showed flickers of progress toward its long-held dream of becoming the world's factory, Washington and Beijing announced a trade "reset" that could derail Delhi's ambitions to replace China as the global manufacturing hub. Last week, Trump's tariffs on China dropped overnight - from 145% to 30%, vs 27% for India - as the two sides thrashed out an agreement in Switzerland. As a result, there's a chance manufacturing investment that was moving from China to India could either "stall" or "head back", feels Ajay Srivastava of the Delhi-based think tank, Global Trade Research Institute (GTRI). "India's low-cost assembly lines may survive, but value-added growth is in danger." The change in sentiment stands in sharp relief to the exuberance in Delhi last month when Apple indicated that it was shifting most of its production of iPhones headed to the US from China to India. That may well still happen, even though US President Donald Trump revealed that he had told Apple CEO Tim Cook not to build in India because it was "one of the highest tariff nations in the world". "India is well positioned to be an alternative to China as a supplier of goods to the US in the immediate term," Shilan Shah, an economist with Capital Economics, wrote in an investor note before the deal was announced. He pointed out that 40% of India's exports to the US were "similar to those exported by China". There were early signs that Indian exporters were already stepping in to fill the gap left by Chinese producers. New export orders surged to a 14-year high, according to a recent survey of Indian manufacturers. Nomura, a Japanese broking house, also pointed to growing "anecdotal evidence" of India emerging as a winner from "trade diversion and supply-chain shift in low and mid-tech manufacturing" particularly in sectors like electronics, textiles and toys.

EPA The US and China agreed to lower import taxes on goods being traded between the two countries

Some analysts do believe that despite the so-called trade "reset" between Beijing and Washington, a larger strategic decoupling between China and the US will continue to benefit India in the long run. For one, there's greater willingness by Narendra Modi's government to open its doors to foreign companies after years of protectionist policies, which could provide tailwind. India and the US are also negotiating a trade deal that could put Asia's third-largest economy in a sweet spot to benefit from the so-called "China exodus" - as global firms shift operations to diversify supply chains. India has just signed a trade pact with the UK, sharply cutting duties in protected sectors like whiskey and automobiles. It offers a glimpse of the concessions Delhi might offer Trump in the ongoing India-US trade talks. But all of this optimism needs to be tempered for more reasons than one. Apart from the fact that China is now back in the running, companies are also "not entirely writing off other Asian competitors, with countries like Vietnam still on their radars", economists Sonal Verma and Aurodeep Nandi from Nomura said in a note earlier this month. "Hence, for India to capitalise on this opportunity, it needs to complement any tariff arbitrage with serious ease-of-doing-business reforms." A tough business climate has long frustrated foreign investors and stalled India's manufacturing growth, with its share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) stuck at around 15% for two decades. The Modi government's efforts, such as the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, have delivered only limited success in boosting this figure. The government's think tank, Niti Aayog, has acknowledged India's "limited success" in attracting investment shifting from China. It noted that factors like cheaper labour, simpler tax laws, lower tariffs, and proactive Free Trade Agreements helped countries like Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, and Malaysia expand exports - while India lagged behind.

Reuters India's attempts to expand manufacturing has seen limited success.