The Irish Haemophilia Society had to distribute condoms in a hospital car-park in the 1980s to haemophiliacs who had just been given HIV positive test results, the tribunal was told yesterday.
Its chairman, Mr Brian O'Mahony, said the condoms, which could not be given out by doctors, were distributed by him from the boot of his car in the car-park of St James's Hospital, Dublin, where most haemophiliacs would have received news of their HIV status.
The measure, though illegal, meant that by 1991 no Irish haemophiliac had transmitted the virus to his partner, he said.
"I think it was about 1988 or 1989 before there was a public education campaign here on sexual transmission and AIDS and I think we were in very early on in relation to trying to get some information out, but it was very difficult."
The Department of Health would have expected 10 partners to have been infected by 1991 but in fact there were none, Mr O'Mahony said. By 1987/88 the infection of partners in the US was running at a rate of 10 to 15 per cent.
Mr O'Mahony said the fact that no Irish partners were infected by that time was not just due to the work of the IHS but also due to the efforts of Dr Helena Daly. A locum consultant haematologist, Dr Daly covered for Prof Ian Temperley, former director of the National Haemophilia Treatment Centre at St James's for three months in 1985. He said she counselled those who were infected after giving them their HIV positive test results and advised them on precautions they should take to prevent sexual transmission of the virus.
He said there was no point at the time simply telling people to use condoms to prevent transmission of HIV when there were no condoms in the country. "The hospitals could not distribute them or sell them so we got them and gave them out to people. That was actually very difficult because I used to go down to the clinic on a Wednesday evening after work and Dr Daly would send people out to me and I would give them some condoms from the boot of my car. It was very demeaning for them because I was a young man in my 20s and many of these members were much older and didn't know me very well. For some of them who knew me very well it was perhaps even more embarrassing.
"There was also a difficulty in that many of them had very strong Roman Catholic views on this and to them this was a breach of their religious practice. They went into a clinic and were given HIV results and then they came out and there's this young guy in the car-park that they are being sent over to see to get a supply of condoms. It was very difficult but I'm glad we did it. I think it was very worthwhile."
The tribunal, which at present is investigating the response of the IHS to the infection of more than 220 haemophiliacs in the State with HIV and hepatitis C, has already heard that at a later stage - after 1991 - a number of women contracted HIV from their haemophiliac partners.