A mother “felt physically sick” after her young son went to pick up a vial of blood wrapped in a biohazard bag left discarded in an Erith street.

Mum-of-seven Emma Lipscombe, 41, shouted at her four-year-old son Archie to not touch the blood because it could have “had anything wrong with it”.

Emma, who lives in Reddy Road, Erith, said: “It was my daughter Carly Rose, 10, that saw it first and shouted to Arthur not to touch, then when I saw it I pulled him away.

“I screamed at him, I said don’t touch it.

“You just don’t know who it belongs to, Who knows how long it had been there or what it was covered in.”

Emma and her children were on their way to Morrisons when they found the pathology sample discarded in Britannia Close.

She added: “I felt physically sick. It was just there, you don’t know where it came from or what could be on it. It was full up and you could see all sorts of information.”

The area is sheltered accommodation and the closest medical centre is Erith and District Hospital one mile away.

According to Emma, the blood has now disappeared but neither NHS England nor the Bexley Clinical Commissioning Group seemed to know anything about it when contacted.