Blood bank puts further restrictions on donors

The Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) is placing additional restrictions on the range of people who can give blood to reduce…

The Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) is placing additional restrictions on the range of people who can give blood to reduce the risk of the human form of mad cow disease, vCJD, being transmitted by blood transfusion.

Donations from people who underwent certain operations in the UK on or after January 1st, 1980, will no longer be accepted.

Such operations include tonsillectomy or appendectomy, eye surgery, neurosurgery, adenoidectomy, splenectomy or lymph node biopsy.

People who have spent a year or more in the UK between January 1st, 1980, and December 1996 - the time when mad cow disease was at its height - are also banned from donating blood now. The moves are expected to result in 4,000 donors being dropped.

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That vCJD could be transmitted in the blood supply emerged last December when a 69-year-old man died from vCJD in the UK.

Until then, transmission of vCJD via the blood supply was considered possible, but unlikely.

However, the IBTS had already implemented some restrictions,excluding people who had received blood transfusions outside the State and people who had spent designated periods of times in the UK.

Announcing the additional restrictions yesterday, the national medical director of the IBTS, Dr William Murphy, urged new and lapsed donors to come forward, saying the blood bank would have to continue to collect 3,000 donations a week, despite the loss of donors as a result of the new restrictions.

News of the restrictions come as a man in his 20s continues to be treated for suspected vCJD at a Dublin hospital. However, the man never received a blood transfusion or made a blood donation.