A mother who was not told for five years that her three children were infected with hepatitis C was yesterday offered an apology by the National Children's Hospital.
The woman told the tribunal her sons, now teenagers, were diagnosed at different times in 1990. She was injecting them with a clotting agent at home, giving them two injections each a week, and had she known when the first child was diagnosed, she could have thrown out the treatment and saved the others from an illness which attacks the liver and for which there is no cure.
She said there were seven people living in her house and all of them were being put at risk of infection by being kept in the dark. "That is unforgivable . . . For five years their livers were untreated, unmanaged," she said.
She said all the children were infected by the same batch of clotting factor, batch number 9885, manufactured by the Blood Transfusion Service Board. She wanted to know why it wasn't destroyed when one child became infected.
Using the pseudonym Felicity, she said the haemophilia of two of her sons was diagnosed in December 1985 after the children were admitted to Crumlin hospital for the investigation of severe bruising. "There was a question mark over child abuse," she said.
Prof Ian Temperley, former director of the National Haemophilia Treatment Centre, made the diagnosis. He said there was treatment available which would mean they could live full lives. "My husband brought up the thing about the AIDS tragedy earlier that year. He assured us that factor was gone and it would not happen again," she said.
The children, including a third haemophiliac son born in the late 1980s, continued on treatment and were quite healthy until late 1995 when one of them became depressed, withdrawn and suffering from bouts of fatigue. She called the Haemophilia Treatment Centre at St James's Hospital and asked a nurse if it was possible a child so young would be depressed. The nurse said it was probably his hepatitis.
Felicity told the nurse he did not have hepatitis. The nurse checked a list and told her the names of her three sons were on it. They all had hepatitis.
"I thought she had made a mistake," Felicity said. She called the Irish Haemophilia Society and its director made an appointment for her to see the new National Haemophilia director, Dr Owen Smith, who replaced Prof Temperley. He verified what she thought was a mistake.
Mr Mel Christle SC tendered a "humble apology" on behalf of the National Children's Hospital. He said it was clear she or her family were not informed the children had contracted hepatitis C as far back as 1991. "I hope this apology goes in some way, but not any great way, to ease the pain that you, your husband and children have suffered as a result of that lapse in communicating information that was known as far back as September 1991," he said.