Hepatitis scandal goes on

Scandals are 10 a penny. But one is immensely more grave than all the others. Most of them are about money but the nexus of scandals around the blood transfusion service - the contamination of blood products with Hepatitis C and HIV - is about human lives, writes Fintan O'Toole.

The State poisoned hundreds of its citizens. Several died. Given the appalling scale of this outrage, it seems astonishing that it should be still going on. But it is.

The Fine Gael deputy Phil Hogan has been quietly accumulating a large collection of internal documents relating to a particularly astonishing aspect of the story: the failure by the BTSB (as it then was) to inform blood donors who tested positive for Hepatitis C of their condition. I've gone through them in great detail, not least because the tale they tell is so outrageous that without the documentary proof, it would scarcely be credible.

In all the plethora of extraordinary revelations at the Finlay tribunal that investigated the Hepatitis C scandal, one amazing fact got lost. The tribunal heard from a man identified as Mr L who gave blood on a fairly regular basis in Limerick. In November 1993, he got a letter from the BTSB's Dr Joan Power telling him that one of his donations had been screened and had proved positive for hepatitis. In 1996, however, he discovered, through an Irish Times article, that the BTSB had in fact tested his blood in 1991 and discovered that he had Hepatitis C. For two years, he was told nothing. His own health had been compromised and his family's put at risk.

It subsequently turned out that Mr L was one of at least 27 people in similar situations. The BTSB, however, carried out no real investigation to establish what had happened, and, more importantly, whether or not there were still people who had not been told about positive tests. Given that the meter was running, in the sense that such people could innocently pass on the virus to others, this in itself was extraordinary.

We know for certain that the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, knew all about this problem. Mr L instituted High Court proceedings. A note on the file dated November 15th, 2000. states that "I briefed the Minister on this today and gave him a copy of the Statement of Claim, note for counsel, and Finlay report extracts which he wishes to study."

The response of Mr Martin and his Department is summed up in a note for the secretary general of the Department, written in September 2002, by Paul Barron, the assistant secretary in charge of acute hospitals and blood policy. "The Department is open to criticism for our handling of the Donor L (Mr L) affair. Firstly, after the Finlay tribunal in 1997, we failed to ascertain how many other donors were similarly treated and to ensure that all of them were informed and offered counselling etc. Secondly, when Donor L initiated legal proceedings in mid-2000 we tried to have the case settled out of court and without further inquiry or publicity. It was only when that attempt failed that we were belatedly spurred into action."

In June 2002, Mr Martin asked for a report from the BTSB (now the IBTS). That report, from the CEO Martin Hynes (who took up his post only in 1998), should have raised the hairs on the back of his neck. Mr Hynes said that in reviewing the files, he could find nothing "which would suggest that the significance of the evidence on this issue registered particularly highly" with the BTSB.

When Mr Hynes began to look into the issue in response to Mr L's High Court case, "I and others had great difficulty in persuading the custodian of some of the records to make these, or the information which they contained, available to us". He also noted that "the search for the truth was sometimes impaired rather than improved. Some of those who, in the past, had sought to deal with this issue had little support and often had their motivation questioned."

Mr Martin thus knew two extraordinary things. He knew that neither the BTSB nor his own Department had done anything to make sure that people who had tested positive for Hepatitis C had been informed of this fact. And he knew that even attempts by the CEO of the IBTS to get to the bottom of the issue were being impeded. All of this, moreover, then got even worse. Mr Hynes resigned from the IBTS, largely because his efforts to get to grips with this issue were not supported by the board. Given all of this knowledge, what has the Minister done? Essentially nothing. As far back as June 2002, the terms of reference for an independent inquiry to establish the full truth were agreed. Such an inquiry would not be merely retrospective: the question of whether there are still people who tested positive and have not been informed is an open and extremely urgent one. Yet no inquiry has been established, even though the Minister has long been committed to do so. If anything, for reasons related to his own political power base to which I will return next week, he has made the tackling of this scandal all the more difficult.