THE tribunal was told yesterday that two phials of suspect anti-D were given to patients a month after the product had been withdrawn by the Blood Transfusion Service Board in 1994. Neither patient had tested positive for hepatitis C.
Ms Pauline Coakley, a BTSB quality assurance official, said she had spoken by phone to Ms Anne Kelleher at the Marion Nursing Home in Limerick and told her the product was to be sent back. Ms Kelleher said she received no such call. She thought the controversy referred to batches made in the 1970s and 1980s.
Ms Coakley had put a question mark beside the Marion home on a list of places contacted by the BTSB in February 1994, as she was uncertain whether it had been contacted. She then phoned the home and Ms Kelleher said they had "no anti-D".
No letter had been sent to the nursing home in February 1994, as had been sent to all others on the list "except St Colman's hospital, where they had no anti-D. On April 7th 1995 she called to the Marion home. Ms Kelleher was younger than "the lady who spoke to me on the phone", she said. Ms Kelleher's mother was in and out of the home, the tribunal had been told.
Ms Coakley was unable to explain why she had been told to call to collect unused anti-D from the home if the BTSB had been told there was none there.
Ms Kelleher told the tribunal she had two phials of anti-D stock, manufactured at the BTSB, in stock in February 1994. On March 17th and 24th these phials were given to patients and notification was sent to the BTSB. The BTSB did not discover these cards until July 1994.
Ms Kelleher recalled receiving a phone call from a woman at the BTSB at the end of March 1994. She told this woman they had no anti-D left but that she had ordered some of the new Canadian stock. She remembered the call clearly. A phone call from the BTSB was "a big thing" in a small nursing home such as theirs, she said.