A treatment was being given to haemophiliacs in the Republic two years after it was banned in the US, a healthcare worker claimed yesterday. Giving evidence to the Lindsay tribunal, the healthcare worker, who married a HIV-positive haemophiliac in 1987, said she wanted to know how this could have happened.
Using the name Agatha, she said the a.g.m. of the Irish Haemophilia Society in 1982 was told by Prof Ian Temperley, former director of the National Haemophilia Centre, that money was the reason why blood-clotting agents were being imported from the US at the time.
"He said money was the reason for not using products made in this country. He said Pelican House [headquarters of the BTSB] would have had the monopoly and would have charged whatever they liked for the treatment," she recalled. Her husband died in December 1994, six months after his brother, who was also infected.
Children were not an issue when she married first but when friends started having children she decided to have one. She became pregnant and seven months into the pregnancy tested negative for HIV. She did not tell the hospital of her husband's infection but two days after her son's birth, a consultant came to her and said her husband was HIV-positive and he had pricked his finger during the delivery.
She told him he could take a blood sample from her for testing. "He did and had the results back in 24 hours whereas I had to wait a whole week," she said.
Another witness, Peter, whose son Dermot died aged 39 of AIDS-related illnesses, said he believed blood products should not have been sourced in the US where "any Tom, Dick or Harry" could donate blood, "but then there was probably a financial consideration and it all boils down to money, doesn't it?
"My son did not commit suicide. He did not die of natural causes. He was killed. He was killed just as if somebody walked up to him with a gun and pulled the trigger." Peter added that his son was alone in his hospital bed in St James's when told he was dying. He believed this was cruel and insensitive.