Guidelines set down by the National Haemophilia Treatment Centre on the treatment of patients in the 1980s were not adhered to, it emerged at the tribunal yesterday.
The guidelines, compiled by Prof Ian Temperley in 1985, required the batch numbers of clotting agents for haemophiliacs to be logged when they were sent to treatment centres. However, this proved very difficult, Prof Temperley said. It was partly because the national centre could not get the money for a computer on which to save such records, he said.
The guidelines also suggested that mild haemophiliacs be treated with cryoprecipitate, a safer Irish made product, but this did not always happen.
Questioned by counsel for the tribunal, Mr John Finlay SC, he said he did not consult doctors in the regional haemophilia treatment centres in Cork, Limerick and Galway before drawing up the guidelines. He said the guidelines were never sent to Limerick or Galway.
Prof Temperley said he became aware of AIDS as a problem in 1983 and before he drew up his own guidelines on how patients should be treated to take into account the new risks of the disease spreading through blood products, he adhered to standards in Britain.
He said if the British directors had suggested in 1983 or 1984 that imported clotting agents should not be used, he would have stopped using them. However, in a letter sent by British doctors to Prof Temperley in June 1983, it was suggested that children and mild haemophiliacs be given cryoprecipitate.
Prof Temperley said he clearly did not immediately relate the guidelines to his practice. He set out his own guidelines five months later. He could not explain the delay.