A DOCTOR who had been on the board of the Blood Transfusion Service Board for 18 years said yesterday it was never aware of any problems with anti D supplied by Pelican House.
Dr Brendan O'Donnell, retired medical health officer for Dublin, said he was on the BTSB from April 15th, 1966 to June 23rd, 1984. The first time he heard about the anti D problem was from newspaper reports in 1994.
He said the agenda for board meetings was prepared by Dr J.P. O'Riordan, chief medical consultant at Pelican House, or his assistant, Dr J. Wilkinson. He said board members "had great respect for Dr O'Riordan, and if he expressed any view we would go along with it".
There had never been any discussion at board meetings about patient X in 1976 or 1977, he recalled, nor about anti D difficulties, he told the inquiry.
He was surprised when he heard about these matters, but "I don't think we (the board) could have been of any great assistance" to Dr O'Riordan on them. He felt he had brought them to "the proper forum" by bringing them to the attention of the scientific meetings' instead. But if Dr O'Riordan was aware of anything at the time be (Dr O'Donnell) was surprised he did not mention to the board, he had referred to other clinical matters," he told Mr David McParland, BL for the McCole family and Positive Action.
Earlier, a former BTSB biochemist, Dr Stephen O'Sullivan, told the tribunal that he had a meeting with Dr Aileen Scott, the medical director of the National Drugs Advisory Board (NDAB), in 1979. He spoke to her about "the hepatitis like reaction from one batch of anti D immunoglobulin" supplied by the BTSB.
He also told her about "the hepatitis fridge incident" at Pelican House in 1975 when "the entire stock of anti D" was placed in a freezer at the hepatitis testing laboratory. He told the tribunal that this incident was the cause of infected anti D, and not plasma taken from patient X.
Dr O'Sullivan denied suggestions by Mr Donal O'Donnell, counsel for the BTSB, that his evidence was a "concoction".
Dr James Kirrane, a consultant pathologist at the Mater Hospital and who also attended scientific meetings at Pelican House during the late 1970s, said he had no recollection of hepatitis ever being discussed in relation to anti D at those meetings. He could only remember "jaundice" being used.
