Regional blood chief ‘failed to act quickly’

THE head of the regional haemophilia treatment centre in Cork should have acted more quickly and taken greater steps to ensure a safer blood product was available to her patients, the Lindsay Report states.

Dr Paula Cotter, the consultant haematologist in charge of the Cork Regional Centre since 1979, moved swiftly to have the Blood Transfusion Service Board buy only heat-treated products for her patients with haemophilia A once the superior safety of the products became known in late 1984.

However, she did not make the same request for patients with haemophilia B until December 1985.

Nor did she report quickly enough an adverse reaction in a patient which may have alerted the BTSB to the need to withdraw all remaining non heat treated product.

The report acknowledges that Dr Cotter had an extremely heavy caseload.

But it states: “Dr Cotter should have in the summer and autumn of 1985 pursued more vigorously the objective of bringing to an end the use of non heated product”.

It says she should have tried to agree a deadline by which the BTSB would stop their supply of non-heated products.

“It is not unreasonable to expect,” the report concludes, “that she would have taken greater steps to ensure that her patients obtained the benefit of safer products.”