THE Blood Transfusion Service Board admitted yesterday that it had not informed the relatives of deceased people who had received blood products potentially infected with hepatitis C.
The board has identified approximately 335 people, now dead, in its look-back programme which began over two years ago. It targeted people who may have been infected with the virus as a result of receiving anti-D and in a general review, traced the past donations of donors identified with evidence of hepatitis C infection.
The Fianna Fail spokesman on health, Mr Brian Cowen, told the Dail this week that a woman had been infected with Hepatitis C from a blood transfusion in 1970-`71. She is understood to have died from liver cancer in 1994 soon after the hepatitis C scandal became public.
Her family subsequently received compensation from the hepatitis C tribunal, which could open the way for other families to do the same if they were informed of the infection.
Mr Cowen called on the Minister for Health to ensure that the families of people who received these blood products were notified as soon as possible.
Dr Joan Power, regional director BTSB Cork, told The Irish Times it had not yet "commenced a programme of contacting the families of deceased recipients".
"Once we have enough work done on the living recipients we will deal with these people. Our priority is the people that are living," said Dr Power, adding that she expected these relatives would be contacted by the end of the summer.
Dr Power said the majority of people who got blood transfusions were very ill, such as those with leukemia, those on chemotherapy or those with bone marrow problems. "A significant number would be dead within a year. It is used in a lot of cases to maintain the quality of life, Dr Power said. Hepatitis C did not cause mortality in the short term and there was no "direct evidence" that any of those people died from Hepatitis C.
She said it was not surprising to hear of possible infection as far back as 1970. Infection as a result of anti-D occurred from 1978 onwards but the virus was in the blood donation system, mainly as a result of donations from people who were intravenous drug users at some stage in their lives, from much further back.
"We do not know when hepatitis C first appeared in Ireland, it may have been in the late 1960s. We have donors we have identified now who would have been possibly positive as far back as the late 1960s, early 1970s. Whatever the donor source, we have looked to target the recipients of those potentially infected units."
She explained that people who received blood products made from donors who were PCR positive, meaning they continued to have the virus, had an 80 per cent risk of contracting hepatitis C.