A contaminated blood product was administered to four of Dr Paule Cotter's patients a month after one of them had tested positive for HIV from its use, the tribunal was told yesterday.
The four haemophilia B patients received the contaminated BTSB-made Factor 9 on December 8th, 13th and 19th, 1985. They included the brother of a young haemophiliac given the pseudonym Andrew, whose positive HIV test result was reported to Dr Cotter on November 14th, 1985.
Although they received the same batch which infected Andrew, the other three patients escaped getting HIV.
Dr Cotter agreed, however, that another patient - in a separate hospital to hers - might have been infected with un-heat-treated BTSB Factor 9 after December 5th 1985, when a second test result confirmed Andrew was infected with Pelican House product.
Under cross-examination by her counsel, Mr Aongus O Brolchain SC, Dr Cotter said her delay in responding to the December test result was partly because it was subsumed in a series of results returned at the same time. She also said "confidentiality was a huge issue" and the hysteria around AIDS created a problem in dealing with results.
She admitted, however, retrospectively, that she should have given the test result more immediate attention.
Dr Cotter said that treating haemophilia accounted for about 10 per cent of her work at present although it might have been more in the past. Earlier, Dr Cotter rejected a suggestion that a request from one of her patients to be referred to Dublin for anti-AIDS treatment in 1996 prompted her to make similar arrangements for other HIV-positive patients.
Dr Cotter said she had arranged appointments for such patients at St James's Hospital as soon as triple-therapy treatment had become available in mid-1986. She was responding to a claim by Mr Raymond Bradley, solicitor for the Irish Haemophilia Society, that one of her patients, named Dominic, had taken in hand his own care by seeking referral to Dublin for triple-therapy treatment.
Mr Bradley put it to Dr Cotter that Dominic's request precipitated her to refer other patients to Dublin. Dr Cotter said, however, she had "no distinct recollection" that this was the case.
