A Kilkenny health worker who contracted HIV from a blood transfusion in 1985 was "extremely angry" that the Blood Transfusion Service Board made no effort to contact her when the donor of her transfusion tested HIV positive, the tribunal heard.
The Kilkenny woman, referred to by the pseudonym Mary Murphy, attended a doctor in 1996, 10 years after her donor had tested positive. She was suffering from constant headaches and fatigue and was diagnosed HIV positive while abroad.
Counsel for the tribunal, Mr Gerard Durcan SC, said the woman did not wish to give evidence but had made a statement which he read into the record.
"My life has been changed utterly as a result of my contraction of HIV," she said. "I was totally devastated, felt like a leper and became numb and sad at the loss of my future."
She had to give up her job in the medical field, one to which she had devoted 25 years. With the support of her family and close friends she fought suicidal feelings and depression, she said.
"It never occurred to me that I would be putting my health or my life at risk by agreeing to have a blood transfusion.
"I had to face the horror of telling my family and loved ones of my condition and I also had to run the gauntlet of the media attention, which was intense following the issuing of a statement by the health board in relation to my situation.
"When I received confirmation that the blood transfusion was indeed responsible for my contraction of HIV, I was to some extent relieved in that the hurtful and damaging speculation as to other likely causes could be silenced, but I also became extremely angry that I had not been informed years before by the BTSB of the fact that I had received contaminated blood.
"The fact that no proper lookback programme was in place ensured that I had carried on with my life unaware of the risks, both to my own health and the health of those around me," she said.
"The one thing I ask from the tribunal is an assurance that no one else will have to endure what I am enduring.
"There must be accountability. I must know how this was allowed to happen to me and I must believe that it will never be allowed to happen to anyone again," she added.
Mr Durcan said Mary Murphy received her transfusion in July 1985.
The blood she received had been donated that month by Donor A, prior to the introduction of HIV testing of blood donations by the BTSB.
Donor A made another donation in September 1986 and tested HIV positive.
"Following the positive test in September 1986 it would appear that no steps were taken at that time by the BTSB to establish whether Donor A had made any previous blood donations or to attempt to trace the persons who had received any such donations," he said.
"Inquiries were only initiated at the end of September 1996 as to who had received the blood donated by Donor A in July 1985," he added. Independently of this, Mary Murphy tested HIV positive in December 1996.
Mr Durcan said that when the BTSB initiated its look-back at donations made before October 1986, it emerged in the autumn of 1996 that seven persons who had donated prior to October 1986 had tested HIV positive. A list of 31 products made from their blood was drawn up and dispatched to hospitals, with a letter asking for efforts to trace the products.
"The letter did not state that the 31 products on the list were being sought as a result of a fear that the donors from whose donations such products were made may have been infected with HIV," counsel said.
In her evidence yesterday Dr Emer Lawlor, deputy medical director of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service (formerly the BTSB) said the chances of somebody contracting HIV from a blood transfusion today was "extremely low", at one in 3.3 million.