Two-thirds of haemophiliacs infected with HIV in the UK during the 1980s used an imported commercial blood product, the Lindsay tribunal heard yesterday. This compared with 11 per cent of haemophiliacs there who received domestic blood products and were infected in 1984, said Prof Richard Tedder, Professor of Virology at the Royal Free and University College Medical School, London.
However, he said the 11 per cent figure was "skewed" as it included 15 people who were infected through receiving a contaminated batch of blood product in Edinburgh. The figure for those infected through using a domestic blood product would have been around 2 per cent, he said. These figures come from a study published in the British Medical Journal in 1986.
It has been estimated that about 7 per cent of HIV infections during the 1980s in the State were caused by contaminated Irish blood products.
Prof Tedder said in his evidence that haemophiliacs who were given factor 8 from pools of multiple blood donors almost always got some diseases. These diseases could include hepatitis C, he said.
He told the tribunal there was an inherent hazard in using blood from a donor pool, rather than from an individual donor, as the risk of exposure to potential diseases was increased. But, he emphasised, "it is not simply a matter of the larger the pool, the more dangerous".
Prof Tedder concluded his evidence to the tribunal yesterday.