A PARAMEDIC who was bitten by a man infected with hepatitis C as he answered a 999 call has endured "three months of hell" waiting for the all-clear from the disease.

Until last Monday when he received the news, Mick McTague, 46, has been unable to kiss wife Elfi for fear of passing on the virus.

Following the attack in Padiham in June, he has been waiting to see whether tests for the disease - and HIV - were negative.

And Mick, who has been based at Blackburn ambulance station for three years, spent 10 years working as a paramedic in London, but said he had never witnessed such extreme levels of violence until he moved to East Lancashire.

Yet despite sustaining serious injuries that have kept him off work for three months, he said: "If I ever got called out to this man again I would just do my best to treat him and give him the care that he needed."

The attack happened when Mick and crew member Andy Holt, 33, from Colne, were called to a home where a party was under way. A woman had hurt her back and dialled 999 but when the crew arrived at the house they could hear a baby screaming.

As they tried to ask about the baby, drunken partygoers launched an attack.

Mick said: "I was grabbed from behind and thrown to the floor and all the time the man who was attacking me was shouting that he had hepatitis and that he intended to kill me."

It was not the first time he has been attacked while on duty.

He said: "I have been hit over the head with a gin bottle, had the contents of a sick bowl thrown over me, I have been thrown out the back of the ambulance and been punched and kicked. I can deal with it but it is not right that you should expect to face this abuse when you are going to work day in and day out.

"I worked in west central London for 10 years but have never experienced this level of violence before.

"This is a job that I love and I want to carry on doing the job but I don't want to carry on being attacked."

Mick has undergone counselling and occupational therapy since the attack and is now back working as the "third man" at Blackburn ambulance station to ease him back into the job.

But on just his second night back on duty he was verbally abused by a patient he was trying to treat.

He added: "Unfortunately attacks on ambulance crews has become common. We are now so used to being abused and assaulted at work that we tend not to bother reporting it - it has become that common."

Andy Holt added: "I would just ask people to think about what crews are there for. We are trying to save lives and help people in distress, not be abused as human punch bags."