'My mum suffered for 30 years, she was let down by the system': Olympian ... trends now

Olympic medallist Sharron Davies has backed the campaign for compensation for infected blood scandal victims as she told of her mother's decades of suffering.

The former swimmer and TV Gladiator has opened up about the impact on her family of being 'let down by the system' after NHS failures which are the focus of an ongoing public inquiry.

Thousands of people contracted HIV and hepatitis C in what has been described as the worst treatment catastrophe in NHS history.

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and London mayor Sadiq Khan last month joined those calling for families to be compensated as soon as a long-awaiting public inquiry report is published within weeks.

And now Davies, who won 400m medley silver at the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow, has given her support to the campaign while revealing new details of her mother's own ordeal. 

She told how Sheila Davies developed liver cancer in her 40s after being given contaminated blood during an operation to treat gallstones and then contracting hepatitis C.

Sheila died aged 78 in 2017 and her daughter, 61, has now told the Sunday Times: 'My mum suffered for 30 years of her life with it.

'It would have been really good if Mum had had some help towards the end because she was a pensioner and she was desperate to leave her house to her children.

'That was the most important thing she wanted, so she scrimped and saved in the last few years just to make sure that the house was there for us when she died.

'So I think from my perspective, what’s terribly important is that support is given to people who need it and are dying right now.'

She revealed how it took years after the routine gallstones surgery on her mother for her diagnosis with hepatitis C, eventually shown following a blood test.

A doctor told Sheila it must have been during the operation that she contracted the infection which went on to damage her liver and cause cancer.

Official figures suggest one in three people who get hepatitis C will develop cirrhosis in the next 20 to 30 years.

One in five with that condition will subsequently suffer liver failure, while liver cancer will affect one in 20 - with both being potentially fatal.

Sheila Davies spent her last 20 years for the Ministry of Defence at Devonport naval base in the family's home city of Plymouth.

Sharron said of her mother's hepatitis C infection: 'It is very frustrating because I’m sure Mum would still be here today had it not been for this

'It feels very unjust that this was a woman who was really fit and healthy and had every single faculty going who has been let down by the system she was part of.'

She described Sheila as 'just one of these really law-abiding, honest, hard-working women that paid into the system'.

And she said her mother 'would have thought that taking compensation would have been taking money away from the NHS'.

But the Olympian is backing campaigners who want immediate compensation for the infected blood scandal's victims, plus partners, children, parents and carers.

Up to 30,000 patients with haemophilia and other bleeding disorders were given tainted medical products in the 1970s and 1980s, with thousands infected with HIV and hepatitis C as a result.