At least seven of the 260 haemophiliacs who became infected with contaminated blood products in the Republic were infected with either hepatitis C or the HIV virus after receiving by-products manufactured by the Blood Transfusion Service Boa rd, the Lindsay tribunal will hear when it resumes next week.
The majority of haemophiliacs who have given evidence to the tribunal said they became infected with HIV and hepatitis C after receiving a clotting agent imported from the US.
However, it is understood that while most of the haemophiliacs who became infected with HIV and hepatitis C were given imported products, at least seven contracted their infection from cryo-precipitate and Factor 9 clotting agents manufactured by the BTSB in the mid-1980s.
These clotting agents were not heat-treated to eliminate infections in the Republic until October 1985. It was also in October 1985 that blood began to be screened in the Republic for HIV, but a screening test was available elsewhere some months earlier. In July 1985 a Kilkenny health worker became infected with the virus from a blood transfusion and the tribunal will look at how this occurred.
It will also examine the timeliness of any look back by the BTSB once the infected blood was discovered to see which patients might have received it.
Screening of blood for hepatitis C began here in 1991.
On Tuesday the tribunal will, following an opening statement from counsel for the tribunal, begin to examine the role of the BTSB in what its chairperson, Judge Alison Lindsay, has already referred to as a tragedy.
The key figures employed by the BTSB at the time are either deceased or no longer working with the board, but its present deputy national medical director, consultant haemotologist Dr Emer Lawlor, will be in the witness-box for several days giving evidence of what she has been able to establish from reviewing BTSB files.
The tribunal will also examine why blood products were imported from the US by the BTSB.
All the products used were either licensed or undergoing evaluation by the National Drugs Advisory Board, now called the Irish Medicines Board, and their role will be looked at, too.
When contacted yesterday, the chief executive of the Irish Blood Transfusion Service (formerly the BTSB), Mr Martin Hynes, said the blood bank had fully co-operated with the tribunal. He said the chance of somebody contracting hepatitis C from screened blood today was one in 500,000 and for HIV it was one in 3.3 million.