- DUBLIN (AFP) - Irish doctors
were urged on Monday to be cautious about giving blood transfusions in
order to minimise the risk of transmitting infections, amid fears that
the human form of mad cow disease could also be passed on.
-
- "In particular, the possibility that variant
Creutzfeldt
Jakob Disease (vCJD) may be spread by transfusion cannot be discounted
as the present time," guidelines issued by the National Blood Users
Group (NBUG) state.
-
- NBUG, which was set up by the government in 1999, said
the full risk of blood infections could not currently be defined.
-
- In a statement, Health Minister Micheal Martin said:
"The objective must be to avoid unnecessary blood
transfusions."
-
- A series of meetings this month will decide whether up
to one in four of Ireland's blood donor pool should be banned from giving
blood because of concerns about vCJD, the fatal human version of mad cow
disease.
-
- No case has ever been discovered of vCJD being spread
by blood.
-
- "It is huge dilemma," a Irish Blood Transfusion
Service (IBTS) spokeswoman said.
-
- "It is a theoretical risk but you have to act on
the basis there could be transmission."
-
- Experts are considering rejecting two categories of
donors
in a strategy that would have serious implications for maintaining supplies
of blood for Irish hospitals.
-
- The ban would hit people who have had blood transfusions
in Ireland between 1980 and 1996 and also people who lived in Britain and
other countries suffering from BSE for a total of six months at any time
during the 16 years.
-
- The ban on people who have received transfusions in
Ireland
is because of a risk that they could have received blood donated by people
exposed to BSE from eating imported beef or from people who had lived in
BSE countries and had been exposed there.
-
- Despite the fact that one in four of Irish people need
a transfusion once in their lifetime, only five percent of the population
-- or about 100,000 people -- donate blood.
-
- Ireland has had only one case of vCJD, involving a woman
who had lived in the UK.
-
- The blood bank has had major problems in the past with
the infection of more than 1,600 people, most of them women, with Hepatitis
C and HIV.
-
- A judicial tribunal is currently investigating the
circumstances
surrounding infection of people suffering from the blood clotting disorder
haemophilia.
-
- More than half the country's 400 strong haemophiliac
community were infected and more than 70 have died, some of them young
children.
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