THIS haunting image of a dying teenager is believed to have moved Prime Minister Tony Blair to order compensation for families devastated by the human form of mad cow disease.

It shows the emaciated form of Donnamarie McGivern, a bright youngster whose life was crippled and cut short by variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD).

With Donnamarie is her aunt, Tina O'Keefe, who captured a ten-minute home video of her niece in the grip of the dreadful disease.

The video was sent to Tony Blair who passed it on to Lord Justice Phillips, chairman of the BSE inquiry, who will report on its finding today.

Mrs O'Keefe said she hoped the video would lead to families of living victims receiving help to care for their loved ones.

"I sent a copy to Tony Blair because he is a father and is from the same generation as me, and I wanted him to see ten minutes of Donnamarie's life," she said.

"I asked him to set up a centrally-funded care package to help families like my sister."

Mr Blair wrote back: "No one who has seen the video could fail to be moved by it."

Some legal experts believe the video helped sway the Government to agree a multi million pound care and compensation package for victims and their families which is expected to be announced today.

David Body, of law firm Irwin Mitchell, which is acting for victims' families, said of the video: "It is a very powerful piece of evidence."

The video was shot at Donnamarie's home in Lanarkshire, in 1998, more than a year after she became ill. It shows the teenager bedbound, emaciated and virtually blind.

Donnamarie remained in the same state, unable to talk, eat or see, for another year before she died in the arms of her mother, Marie, in 1999 aged 17.

The Prime Minister's emotional response to the video comes as no surprise to North-East mother Frances Hall.

Her son, Peter, died from vCJD in 1996. She said: "It would make a stone weep."

And she told The Northern Echo last night that it was a similar video of Peter that shocked the world and was a catalyst for the BSE inquiry. Images of the young student as a shell of his former self, brought about by the debilitating illness, shocked audiences worldwide. He, like Donnamarie, was videoed during his final months.

Mrs Hall, from Chester-le-Street, County Durham, said: "It made people realise what a horrendous disease this was. I felt I had to warn other parents to be very careful what they fed to their children. We had been through hell. We didn't want others to go through the same."

Today, Lord Justice Phillips will publicly apportion blame for the BSE crisis and will announce whether the Government of the time could have saved lives by handling the situation differently. All sides hope that the £27m inquiry will provide answers on the disaster which has claimed more than 75 lives, almost destroyed the British beef industry and driven farmers to suicide.

Victim's families have called for a re-organisation of Government departments, especially the Department of Health and Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries which they believe failed to act in time. Mrs Hall said: "They did not give enough information. They did not allow me as a mother to decide what was good for my child to eat. I still feel bitter about that."

Beef farmers across the region suffered terribly during nationwide attempts to purge BSE from cattle herds. The industry has never recovered as export markets collapsed and farms went bankrupt.

Rob Simpson, NFU North-East spokesman, said: "The report will address who is to blame, what the situation was and what came together in order to cause the crisis in the first place.

"We hope that the beef farmers particularly will be exonerated. Farmers were just as much a victim as any other people in this crisis. We hope that will be borne out by the report.