The Blood Transfusion Service Board (BTSB) failed to warn potential donors not to donate if they suffered from night sweats and certain other symptoms of AIDS because it would end up having to defer huge numbers of donors.
The board's present national medical director, Dr Emer Lawlor, told the tribunal yesterday that if it adopted this guideline issued by the American Red Cross - the equivalent of the BTSB in the US - it would end up "causing a huge deferral rate of donors" without making any difference in terms of safety.
She said a decision by the American Association of Blood Banks in early 1983 to ask people on their leaflet not to donate if they exhibited "symptoms and signs suggestive of AIDS" was "irrelevant" in the Irish context because doctors bleeding patients would not take their blood if they looked unwell or showed symptoms of AIDS.
Counsel for the tribunal, Mr John Finlay SC, said the director of the BTSB at the time, Dr Jack O'Riordan, wrote in May 1983 to the Council of Europe, in reply to a request for information, saying he was aware of two people in Ireland with AIDS. Yet, the BTSB warning leaflet for donors advising them not to donate if they fell into certain categories did not come out until two months later.
Dr Lawlor said these people would have been clinically ill and their blood would not have been taken.
Asked by counsel what steps the blood bank took to ensure people coming to donate could decide not to give blood without causing embarrassment to themselves if they fitted into a category which was advised not to donate, she said that frequently people who turned up to donate with work colleagues gave blood, even if they shouldn't, because of "peer pressure" but subsequently called the BTSB and advised that their blood should not be used.
Mr Finlay pointed to the American Red Cross leaflet which advised people who suffered "severe night sweats, unexplained fevers, unexpected weight loss, swollen glands" or a rare form of cancer not to donate.
"There is absolutely no evidence that failure to put that on our leaflet had any effect on HIV getting into the bloodstream in Ireland," Dr Lawlor said.
She said they tried to target certain groups such as IV drug users and sexually active homosexuals with their leaflet. "We got some of them but we did not exclude them all," she conceded.