THE South Eastern Health Board has said it has no knowledge of a health care worker in the region having died of as a result of AIDS contracted from a blood transfusion in the 1980s.
On Wednesday the Fianna Fail spokeswoman on health, Mrs Maire Geoghegan Quinn, asked the Minister for Health if he had any knowledge of a second health care worker in the south east who had received a contaminated blood transfusion in the 1980s and died as a result of AIDS. Mr Noonan said he had no knowledge of such a case.
Mrs Geoghegan Quinn told The Irish Times that this health care worker was working in "a very sensitive area". He did not get the transfusion from the South Eastern Health board, but probably in the Eastern Health Board region, she said. A blood test in Dublin revealed the presence of the HIV virus. He stopped working and later died from an AIDS related illness, she said.
A spokeswoman for the South Eastern Health Board said that the board had no knowledge of this case. Its records were complete, and its investigations had revealed three recipients of contaminated blood in all, including the nurse whose case was reported last Monday, and two elderly men who had died from conditions related to their original diseases. "We have no knowledge of anything that smacks of that," she said.
A spokeswoman for the Eastern Health Board said that there had been only one recipient of a transfusion from one of the suspect batches. This was an elderly man, who had since died.