THE national co ordinator of the blood screening programme, which began in 1994, was told by a Department of Health official: "We will call you when we need you," after she expressed concern about the lack of structured meetings, the tribunal of inquiry heard yesterday.
Dr Joan Power described her concern at the time that meetings with the Department were being held sporadically. She contacted Ms Dolores Moran, a Department of Health higher executive officer, about the matter. "The response was of the order that we will call you when we need you," she said.
She told the tribunal that recreational drug users were unwittingly responsible for blood being infected with hepatitis C in the 1970s and 1980s.
The principal source of infection for 45 per cent of people who received the liver infection was from people who had used intravenous drugs "in their wild teenage years, as they looked at it" and forgot about it subsequently. They would be unaware they were carriers of the hepatitis C virus.
"The level of hepatitis C in blood sources dramatically reduced in the 80s when the exclusion criteria for HIV were introduced," she said.
She related how she brought up a query on anti D and hepatitis C with the BTSB medical director, Dr Terry Walsh, on January 19th.
"It was about number five on my agenda... I just casually asked him, Had there ever been a problem with anti D in Ireland?" she said.
She remembered that Dr Walsh look quizzical and stunned. He told her he would have to get out the files. He phoned her on the 21st, saying that most hepatitis C infected women were rhesus negative and that the problem dated to 1977.
From the first month to the end of April he was devastated at what had happened. "He was not sleeping, he was not eating. He was plainly psychologically stressed ... He was obviously just not well at that time," she said.
Dr Power said that by February 1st it was known that all the 1977 hepatitis C cases were of the same type. It was later discovered they all had the same sub type and nucleotide strain, making the connection "absolutely scientifically sound".