Background: Over 1,600 people were infected with Hepatitis C through infected blood and blood products within the Irish state in the 1970’s and 1990’s. The “Hepatitis C scandal” not only severely impacted the lives of those infected, it also significantly damaged the confidence of the Irish public in blood screening procedures. At a time when many are living with progressive disease, the collective memory of the circumstances surrounding the “scandal” have waned and many younger adults are likely to be unaware of these events.
Aims: This research will assess current attitudes to blood screening and blood transfusion procedures in Ireland. It will also examine the attitudes of those with differing levels of knowledge of what happened at the time; including no knowledge of these events. Our objective is to determine if the memory of the Hepatitis C scandal still functions as a barrier to service use and/or if being made aware or reacquainted with the specifics of the scandal influences current explicit and implicit attitudes. Hypotheses: We expect that baseline attitudes will be generally favourable to the use of blood products in Ireland across all age groups. Increased knowledge of the events surrounding the “scandal” will reduce attitudes from baseline. We expect this reduction to be greater for those with lower initial levels of knowledge. We also expect that implicit attitudes will reveal more negative attitudes to blood screening and the use of blood products than explicit attitudes.
Method: A mixed methods anonymous survey and qualitative semi-structured interview approach will be used. Attitudinal data will be collected via survey questions and an in-built online implicit attitude test. 10% of participants, representative of the sample characteristics, will take part in the interviews. Their data will provide additional explanatory power to the quantitative results.
