Walsh was `stunned' by anti-D link query, says consultant

DR Joan Power, a consultant haematologist at the BTSB in Cork, remembered the "stunned" reaction to a question she put about anti-D during a meeting in Pelican House in 1994.

In evidence to the tribunal yesterday she recalled a BTSB medical sub-committee meeting on January 17th, 1994, along with Dr Terry Walsh, then chief medical consultant at the BTSB, and Dr Emer Lawlor, then a locum consultant at the BTSB.

During the meeting, as they were going through "routine matters", she asked Dr Walsh whether there had ever been any problems with the anti-D programme in Ireland. She recalls he was "taken aback. He seemed somewhat stunned by it the question. He seemed very upset." He replied that "yes, there was", and said he would check the files. She had to leave the meeting then.

On January 19th Dr Walsh rang her to say there had been a number of rhesus-negative-linked hepatitis C cases in Ireland and added that "it appeared to be a 1977 problem". Dr Power's question arose from research she had been doing in Munster.

Initially aimed at screening donors for hepatitis C, she found the pattern of reaction was not typical. "It did not reflect the normal demographic profile off the Munster region in either age or sex." It did not conform with international studies, which had established most who tested hepatitis C positive were males. And the women who tested positive were older than the average female blood donor.

In December 1993 she held a consultation for donors, at which one woman said she had had an anti-D injection. It raised questions for Dr Power, from which she soon established a pattern between recipients of anti-D and the incidence of hepatitis C.

Going to that January 1994 meeting at the BTSB in Dublin, she "was not certain at all" about the matter. Following the meeting she prepared a report for the BTSB medical sub-committee on the matter, which was followed on February 18th, 1994, by a meeting with the Department of Health.

She felt Dr Walsh was "in shock". It was one reason why she wrote down everything afterwards, so everyone could be clear on what was taking place.