The Blood Transfusion Service Board "off-loaded" an unnecessarily large amount of non-heat-treated factor 9 to a doctor after she had requested product that was heat-treated to guard against HIV, the tribunal heard yesterday.
Dr Helena Daly, who for a time was the sole consultant at the National Haemophilia Treatment Centre, said it did not need the more than 100,000 units of untreated product supplied to it by the board in August 1985. The product was allocated to the centre after Dr Daly had confronted Pelican House officials over their failure to heat-treat their products.
Dr Daly said the blood bank's former national director, the late Dr Jack O'Riordan, was "very annoyed" with her request for heat-treated material and she felt she had been "dismissed".
As a result, Dr Daly said she felt her freedom to prescribe the safest possible product was "limited". Where possible, she said, she put patients on heat-treated commercial factor 9 but there was not enough to go around.
Counsel for the BTSB, Mr Frank Clarke SC, put it to her there was "more than enough" concentrate had it been ordered from the blood bank. A minimum of 97,000 units of heat-treated commercial factor 9 was in stock, he said, which was more than the estimated 78,000 units of untreated BTSB product used by the centre between August and September 1985.
Dr Daly agreed she had not made a formal order for commercial factor 9 through the blood transfusion unit at St James's Hospital, Dublin, where the centre was based. She said she had made a request for such product at her meeting with Dr O'Riordan and a fellow board official, Mr Sean Hanratty, at Pelican House, and "the answer I received was `no'. " She said she was not aware the board had sufficient heat-treated material in stock to meet her needs, adding it "puzzled" her as to why it sent 100,000 units of untreated product when safer product, which she had explicitly sought, was available.
Earlier, under cross-examination by Mr Raymond Bradley, solicitor for the Irish Haemophilia Society (IHS), Dr Daly agreed the IHS had played a crucial role in the establishment of counselling services for haemophiliacs. Within days of taking up her post on July 1st, 1985, she said she was informed by the IHS that patients were still awaiting test results for HIV and that counselling would be needed.
Arising from this contact, she said she sought a list of the centre's patients and began calling them in to inform them of results and their consequences.
The tribunal will hear an application next Tuesday from the IHS regarding the discovery of documents over which the blood bank has claimed legal privilege. The tribunal will then adjourn until May 15th, when it will investigate the response of the Department of Health and ministers to the infection tragedy.
