A new advertising campaign by the Blood Transfusion Service Board is aimed at about 3,500 women who received potentially infected anti-D immunoglobulin. The campaign begins shortly and will be run in Irish newspapers and abroad.
Most of the women who remain untested (up to 3,000) whom the BTSB wish to contact received the anti-D from 1991 to 1994 (the remaining 500 women may have been infected in 1978). Positive Action, which represents women infected with anti-D, has criticised the delay in contacting this group of women, saying it was unacceptable that they had not been notified of information the BTSB holds on them.
The group's chairwoman, Ms Jane O'Brien, said the national screening programme set up in 1994 put a strong emphasis on women who had anti-D in the 1970s, but not the later infection. "Women in the 1990s may have felt that this did not apply to them," she said.
Dr Emer Lawlor, BTSB consultant haematologist with responsibility for the hepatitis C screening programme, said: "We are very anxious without wanting to cause scares that everyone who had anti-D from 1991 to February 1994 comes forward for testing. It is important that we give it one last go and try to get the women from both groups to come forward."
Such contact is particularly important for women infected in the 1990s because of the effectiveness of early treatment for their type of infection. These women appear not to get as sick as quickly as the others and respond better to treatment with interferon.
An expert group set up by the Department of Health has ordered the new campaign to follow up on several issues, including women who received infected batches of anti-D but tested negative for the virus.
A group spokesman said it was in the women's interests to come forward to see if they were carrying the virus, to determine if they have liver damage or "simply as an issue for them to know about".
Dr Lawlor said the campaign would run in the Republic, but there were also plans to place advertisements in newspapers in countries with a significant Irish population. The BTSB has continued to trace potentially infected women through batch cards and hospital records.
The BTSB has said it became aware in the second half of 1996 that not everyone exposed to potentially infectious doses of anti-D in 1997-98 had come forward for testing. Since then work has also been carried out on the women infected in the 1990s who have not been tested.
Speaking of this infection Dr Lawlor said 15,000 women received doses of anti-D containing plasma from a woman known as patient Y. This compares with 4,062 possibly infectious doses made from patient X's plasma in the 1970s. Of these 4,062 doses the BTSB has batch cards for only 2,088 women. She said, however, that since 12,000 women from 1977-78 have already come forward for testing.