Hepatitis C scandal - Apology can never heal the pain

The apology tendered by the Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) to 33 donors was politely acknowledged, rather than welcomed, by two support groups yesterday.

It was an appropriate response to an apology which came about 10 years late after the IBTS had grievously ill-served the donors who tested positive for hepatitis C, but were not informed for years of their condition.

It is interesting to note, too, that the apology eventually issued after the representative groups, Transfusion Positive and Positive Action, had sought it during a meeting with the IBTS.

According to Positive Action, the question of an apology arose in 2002 during discussions with the Department of Health and Children, and only yesterday was it forthcoming.

The matter of late notification surfaced first during the Finlay Tribunal in 1996, when it was inquiring into the infection of people with hepatitis C because of contaminated products supplied by the IBTS.

The serious breach in their responsibility to the relevant donors occurred on first testing positive on donations made between 1991 and 1993.

A number of legal actions have been taken against the IBTS by affected donors and one man who contacted hepatitis C through his mother at birth, after she received contaminated blood products, had his action settled for a €2 million earlier this year.

In that case the IBTS admitted the man was injured by its negligence and an apology read on behalf of Health Minister Mary Harney accepted that failures in the health services had caused to much suffering.

Those failures were responsible for suffering on a huge scale among all the victim-donors and their families, and yet nobody has been subjected to the ultimate rigours of the law as a result.

Criticism in various reports is an inadequate substitute for holding to legal responsibility those who wittingly caused, or allowed, the failures for which the IBTS yesterday apologised.

For those donors and their families it is understandable if they fail to find closure to this particular issue, as was expressed by the IBTS in its apology.

The board of the IBTS commissioned Professor Bernhard Kubanek to carry out an independent review of all the data relating to the notification of donors between 1991 and 1994 who tested positive for hepatitis C.

That report was welcomed, and not merely acknowledged, by Positive Action, clearly distinguishing between his report and the belated apology.

Because of what the report contained they were compelled to utter the apology which they had agreed to, but it can never heal the pain and suffering which it admitted it caused to the donors and their families in failing to inform them of such crucial results.