A person with haemophilia who tested HIV-positive in late 1986, more than a year after the Blood Transfusion Service Board (BTSB) introduced a HIV screening test, was probably infected by the product of a foreign company which did not heat-treat its product to a sufficiently high temperature, the tribunal heard.
Counsel for the tribunal, Mr John Finlay SC, presented documents to show that the patient, who attended the National Haemophilia Treatment Centre in Dublin, had tested HIV-negative in the summer of 1985, but tested HIV-positive in December 1986.
Dr Emer Lawlor, deputy medical director of the BTSB, said the patient had received a number of products in the intervening period, including concentrate manufactured abroad and cryo precipitate manufactured by the BTSB.
Dr Lawlor said she believed the most likely source of infection was a clotting factor manufactured by Armour, an American company, which the patient received on February 21st, 1986.
The Armour batch in question was apparently heat-treated at 60 degrees celsius for 30 hours and was made from plasma donations which had not been individually tested for HIV antibodies.
Dr Lawlor said there was a doubt about the efficacy of that particular formula of heat-treatment in eradicating the HIV virus. She said a product heat-treated with that method appeared to have been responsible for a number of late HIV diagnoses in other countries, including the UK, the Netherlands, the US and Canada.
To questions from Mr Finlay on whether the BTSB's cryo precipitate might have caused the infection, she said that while a unit of cryo-precipitate was made from a donation made in December 1984 by a first-time donor who turned out later to be HIV-positive, she did not feel he would have received some of this batch, as it was issued in mid-1985.
The BTSB did not stock Armour product after 1985, she said.
A website on the tribunal has been opened by the legal team representing the Irish Haemophilia Society, Malcolmson Law. It can be found at www.mlaw.ie