Clinics `inadequate' for testing of HIV

Hospital-based clinics for sexually transmitted disease (STD) were inadequate for the testing of HIV in the mid-1980s because they tended to attract only individuals from high-risk categories, the tribunal was told yesterday.

Dr Emer Lawlor, deputy medical director of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service, said she believed such clinics on their own were not enough. And in the absence of alternative facilities, she said, the blood bank was concerned that "the respectable person", who did not fit into a highrisk category and was not going to turn up at an STD clinic, might donate blood to find out whether they were HIV positive.

Concern about this "magnet effect" was one of the main reasons why the board delayed introducing HIV testing until October 1985, she said.

Counsel for the Department of Health, Mr Ian Brennan, informed her that Dr James Walsh, the former co-ordinator of AIDS policy in the Department, would contest her evidence and would say that for reasons of confidentiality alone STD clinics were the obvious place to locate HIV testing facilities. But Dr Lawlor said she disagreed.

Mr Brennan said Dr Walsh would further inform the tribunal that in all his discussions with the BTSB it was never put to him that the lack of alternative testing sites was delaying the introduction of HIV testing by the blood bank.

Dr Walsh would also testify that alternative HIV screening sites were in operation throughout the State at STD clinics before the introduction of testing at Pelican House, and that these alternative sites were successful in picking up the bulk of positive tests.

Earlier, under cross-examination by Mr Martin Hayden, counsel for the Irish Haemophilia Society, Dr Lawlor said she thought there was one infection caused by cryoprecipitate but she had not completed her inquiries. She noted, given all the use of "cryo" over the years, she would be surprised if one such case did not occur.