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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 3 Hansard (23 March) . . Page.. 686 ..

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pool and thereby prevent transmission to the transfusion recipient. In Australia, the Queensland Red Cross Blood Bank was the only blood bank to introduce this screening test in donors. It is assumed, that if the ACT Red Cross Blood Bank had introduced ALT testing at the same time as in Queensland, the risk of transmission of Hepatitis C may have been reduced. Once Hepatitis C was discovered then preliminary testing was introduced, although at times even these tests were inaccurate.

The failure of all Australian States, except Queensland, to introduce ALT testing for all blood donors may have created a situation where the Red Cross Blood Service in those states is legally liable to pay compensation.

Lookback is a program that seeks to identify blood donors who are positive for the hepatitis C virus (HCV) and the recipients of the blood products they donated. There are two ways of doing this. Both involve searching records (usually not computerised) and tracking patients. The Australian Red Cross Blood Service-ACT (ARCBS-ACT) has been testing all donors of blood for the hepatitis C virus since February 1990. For those donors who subsequently test positive to HCV, Lookback is carried out on all previous donations. When all units are sourced the next step of the process is to match the products to the recipients of them. In all cases when a person who now has HCV identifies blood transfusion as a risk factor, a recipient-triggered Lookback commences. This involves finding the transfusion record in the person's medical notes and tracing the blood units shown back to the donors in an attempt to find a donor who is now positive for HCV. When and if a donor is identified then a full Lookback on all products that the donor has donated will be conducted and any other recipients who may have been affected will also be contacted.

In addition to the follow up of these 'recipient triggered' cases we have notification from the Australian Red Cross Blood Service (ARCBS) of 159 possibly infected blood units in the ACT. In this case the follow up is known as Donor Triggered Lookback. The units in question have been sent to five hospitals, The Royal Canberra Hospital, Woden Valley Hospital, Calvary Hospital, John James Private Hospital and Queanbeyan Hospital. The majority of the units went to The Canberra Hospital. The investigation of these cases was delayed until around 260,000 paper records from the Pathology Department at The Canberra Hospital were transferred onto a data base. This has now been completed and the matching of a batch unit number to a recipient has commenced. The Lookback coordinator now has matches in ninety four cases. Sixty of the recipients are deceased according to their medical records.

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