THERE ARE major deficiencies at the centre which provides care to people with haemophilia in Cork, according to external auditors.
The auditors, who visited the facility at Cork University Hospital in 2006 and are due to return again at the end of this month, found the infrastructure at the unit "very poor and grossly inadequate".
They found no dedicated space for the care of patients with haemophilia. "At times patients have to be moved from one space to another in the middle of a consultation or procedures cancelled at short notice due to lack of a place," their report said.
It added: "The facilities significantly hamper the delivery of effective and efficient care for patients with inherited bleeding disorders."
The UK auditors recommended that dedicated space be found for the haemophilia centre and that a consultant be employed to take overall responsibility for the unit.
The auditors also inspected the paediatric haemophilia centre at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, and the national centre for adults at Dublin's St James's Hospital. At Crumlin they identified the need for a clinician to lead the haemophilia service and at St James's the need for protected beds for inpatients with haemophilia.
The audits were ordered by the National Haemophilia Council, which was established following the recommendations of the Lindsay Tribunal, which inquired into the infection of haemophiliacs with HIV and hepatitis C by contaminated blood products.
Its chairman Prof John Bonnar said yesterday the recommendations of the auditors had been passed to the HSE and the hospitals, and he expected them to be delivered on within the next year.
A centralised inpatient unit with protected beds at St James's has now passed the design stage. But the infrastructural problems in Cork have still to be addressed.
Brian O'Mahony, chief executive of the Irish Haemophilia Society, said, however, that the HSE was now examining a proposal for a modular centre in Cork.
He pointed out that the activity on these recommendations had only taken place in recent months, as a fresh audit was about to begin to check what had been acted on.
Meanwhile, a European haemophilia conference at Dublin Castle at the weekend heard how new technology has the potential to allow women carriers of haemophilia to have children without the condition by pre-selecting the embryos to be implanted in their womb. A small number of children without haemophilia have already been born in this way, using preimplantation genetic diagnosis.
It also heard how techniques are now being developed to allow a carrier of haemophilia, in the first two months of pregnancy, to ascertain whether her foetus is male and has the condition. Prof Flora Peyvandi, an Italian haematologist, said this would allow mothers to prepare for the birth or to seek a termination.
Prof Bonnar said that a child born in the Republic now with haemophilia will have a normal life expectancy. "This is an amazing advance," he said.