Staff shortages `ignored' in 1980s

Complaints were made many times by a leading treater of haemophiliacs at St James's Hospital, Dublin, about the shortage of staff…

Complaints were made many times by a leading treater of haemophiliacs at St James's Hospital, Dublin, about the shortage of staff to counsel his patients in the 1980s but they fell on deaf ears, the tribunal heard.

Prof Ian Temperley described the effect of the shortage in one letter in March 1988. "One important aspect of this is that we have had to abandon counselling for wives and steady girlfriends of haemophiliacs because of lack of staff. This means that we are unable to affect the heterosexual spread of HIV infection," he wrote.

He said the shortage had meant the National Haemophilia Treatment Centre at St James's, of which he was director, had not met the standards set by treatment centres in Europe and the US.

Documents showed he had written to the hospital administration since November 1984 seeking more social workers for the centre.

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In one letter to the hospital CEO, Mr Liam Dunbar, in August 1986, he wrote that 70 per cent of patients with severe haemophilia A now had the AIDS virus but there had been no extra input by social workers to assist with counselling.

Prof Temperley told the tribunal he had been pushing hard to get social workers but "it did not convert into currency".

He said he felt neither St James's nor the Department of Health gave sufficient credence to the centre's difficulties. Funding was a problem.

Counsel for the Irish Haemophilia Society, Mr Martin Hayden, asked when did the stage come when he felt he had to put his foot down. Prof Temperley replied: "I think we had to buckle under".

By 1989 only half of HIV-positive haemophiliacs had been seen by social workers.