SIX members of Transfusion Positive were infected with hepatitis C in the four months between the Department of Health approving screening in May and the setting up of the test on October 1st, 1991, the tribunal heard yesterday.
Mr Gerard Hogan, secretary of the group, which is made up of 200 hepatitis C infected people, said there were three cases of people having contracted the virus through transfusions in June 1991 and a further three in August 1991.
Mr Hogan said he had "heard talk" of a contingency fund existing in 1991 to pay for the test, and that 12 members were infected between April and August 1991.
Twenty one members had become infected since August 1989, when an early hepatitis C test, the first generation Elisa test, became available. Failure to introduce testing as early as 1987, when the BTSB first asked the Department of Health for approval to do so, meant that 20 per cent of the group's 200 members had become infected.
His perspective on the issue, he said, was not the same as the Department's. Transfusion Positive was concerned about the timing of the test's introduction and believed that if it had been brought in earlier fewer people would have been infected. He presented a list that he compiled over Christmas of members and the dates they received infected transfusions.
Two of his personal friends were on the list. One had become infected in November 1990, "well within the time frame for a test", and one the following April.
"When I read these I cannot describe what I felt, except that these people had to come to terms with the original reasons why they got this (the infected transfusion) in the first place, and then they found a second reason," he said.
The victims had lost an 80 per cent chance of not getting infected (the screening test was 80 per cent effective at the time).