Blood donor restrictions increased.

Ananova ^ | 7-22-04 | Unknown

[scouse]

Ananova:

Blood donor restrictions increased

The Government has tightened measures to protect the UK's blood stocks after it emerged that a second patient may have contracted vCJD through a transfusion.

The patient received a blood transfusion in 1999 from a donor who later went on to develop variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease - the human form of so-called "mad cow disease".

The National CJD Surveillance Unit said the patient died of causes unrelated to the brain-wasting disease, but a post-mortem revealed the presence of the vCJD agent.

It follows the first reported case of a patient being infected with vCJD from a blood transfusion, which was announced by Health Secretary John Reid last December.

The patient, who received donor blood during an operation in 1997, developed vCJD and died six years later.

In response to the case - thought to be the first person-to-person transmission of vCJD in the world - the Government banned anyone who had received a blood transfusion since January 1980 from donating blood in the future.

The Department of Health said it was now extending measures to cover two further groups of potential donors who will no longer be allowed to give blood from August 2, following advice from the Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Blood and Tissue (MSBT).

These groups are:

:: Those donors who are unsure if they have previously had a blood transfusion.

:: A group of donors - known as apheresis donors - who have had a blood transfusion. These donors make frequent visits to donate blood where a machine removes certain components of the blood with the rest returned to the donor.

[scouse]

Could tourism now be a threat to the United States?