Only one witness remains to be heard by the inquiry into haemophiliacs infected with HIV/hepatitis C, chairwoman Judge Alison Lindsay told the tribunal yesterday, before final submissions are heard.
The witness, it is understood, had been unable, for health reasons, to attend the tribunal before this. Judge Lindsay said his evidence would be heard next Wednesday, October 31st. Yesterday's inquiry was taken up with technical details surrounding test data referred to the Virus Reference Laboratory and the updating of the tribunal's records accordingly.
Laboratory records of 35 haemophiliacs who tested positive for HIV indicated only in five cases that they had been tested for hepatitis C, the tribunal heard.
The five had all tested negative at various times between 1990 and 1994, confirmed Mr Seamus Dooley, the laboratory's manager. The other 30 records did not disclose if the men had been tested for hepatitis C, he agreed with Mr Gerard Durcan, counsel for the tribunal, because no test results "one way or another" were indicated in the records.
Twenty-one samples were identified by the laboratory in response to a request from the Lindsay tribunal to find specimens that could be retrospectively tested for HIV.
Two of these specimens were of particular interest, Mr Dooley suggested.
In one case a number of tests were carried out and the conclusion was HIV positive.
The findings were "suggestive of very recent infection with HIV", said the laboratory manager, referring to the time the sample was collected.
He had been inclined to think the result was negative at first, he agreed with Mr Durcan, based on the line assay test employed. But when an antigen assay test was used the result was positive, and suggested recent infection.
The line assay test was also indeterminate in the second of these specimens but a subsequent antigen assay test had shown negative.
There were some conflicting indications and the results were inconclusive, but ultimately the laboratory had decided the outcome was negative.
