Martin outlines concerns over variant CJD SEANAD REPORT

SEANAD REPORT: The most difficult and challenging board for anyone to serve on nowadays was the Irish Blood Transfusion Service…

SEANAD REPORT: The most difficult and challenging board for anyone to serve on nowadays was the Irish Blood Transfusion Service Board, the Minister for Health and Children, Mr Martin, said.

"You would want to think twice before you would go on that board," he said during a debate on the Lindsay Tribunal report into the infection of haemophiliacs with HIV and hepatitis C.

Mr Martin said he was speaking as someone who had invited people, with success, to join the board. Each month, members had to ensure that they were informed about developments in the field for which they were responsible.

One of the major pressing issues coming down the tracks was variant CJD and its transmissibility. One of the decisions which had to be made was whether the entire cohort of people who had lived in Britain during the critical period of the incubation of the disease should be "deferred" from donating blood.

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A vital issue which arose was what impact such a step would have on life-saving surgery here.

"We have made that call. We are continuing to review that call. We have already had some deferrals and there may be a need for more. But every time we make those calls there is another side to the occasion; that you have got to try to make sure that you have got an adequate blood supply to save life."

A national CD committee was in place to advise on these issues and the IBTSB was also involved in this work.

Mr Martin said that when he read the Lindsay Report he asked himself the same kind of questions that people had been asking as to what had been known in the past about the need for heat treatment of blood products. "Now we have to ask ourselves the same questions about transmissibility of CJD and what the risk is to the population into the future."

Dr Maries Ayes (Ind) said he reported the decision to refer the report to the DPP.

He said one of the things he drew from the report was that it might actually discourage people from rushing willy nilly to tribunals as the sole means of finding out the truth about anything.

"To my mind this is a situation which might well have been better handled by means of a criminal investigation, as happened in France, for instance, where people at the end of the day where held accountable.

"I am not one for locking people up, but, nevertheless, I think there are methods of getting at the truth, and the tribunal is not necessarily the best one."