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DUNKERQUE In a country that has seen a former prime minister stand trial for his alleged mishandling of the threat of HIV contamination of the blood supply, the agency responsible for ensuring the safety of blood products in France — the Agence française de sécurité sanitaire des produits de santé (AFS-SAPS) — is not taking any chances. Anyone who has spent a year or more in the UK between 1980 and 1996 is now prohibited from donating blood in France.The ban, which takes effect from this month, is prompted by fears that the infectious agent responsible for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and new variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (vCJD) — the human form of the disease — can be transmitted through blood. In the US, Canada and Australia, stricter measures are already in place: donors who have been in the UK for 6 months or more can no longer give blood in these countries. The UK has been singled out because, with its 180,000 cases of BSE and 87 cases of vCJD, it is thought that many people in the country might be incubating the disease.Public concern about the threat of BSE and vCJD swept through France in the final months of last year following a tripling in the number of infected cows and reports of new cases of vCJD. The French crisis — just over 180 cases in cattle and three cases of vCJD — so far pales in comparison with that in the UK.To allay fears in France, Professor Christian Charpy, the director of the French blood transfusion service, explained that all blood products in the country have, since 1998, been subjected to 'leukodepletion'. It is thought that lymphocytes might harbour the agent responsible for vCJD, and the removal of such cells should lower the risk of transmission. Not all experts are convinced of the effectiveness of leukodepletion though, as plasma could become contaminated by leakage from broken cells.The French decision on the ban was taken even though a team of 14 scientists concluded in their report to the AFS-SAPS that there is not a single confirmed case whereby vCJD in humans has been transmitted through blood or blood products. Only 6 of the 14 scientists supported a ban, which means losing an estimated 11,000 donors. The AFS-SAPS is compelled to be cautious, some say, to avoid a backlash of the kind that led to former prime minister, Laurent Fabius, and two of his ministers being taken to court in 1999, charged with manslaughter. They were accused of delaying measures to protect the country's blood supply and blood products from contamination with HIV in the 1980s; Fabius and his ministers were eventually cleared. Others like Steve Dealler, a BSE researcher at Burnley General Hospital in the UK, say that French authorities "are acting reasonably" and that it will only be a matter of time before other European countries follow the French. Dealler, who was one of the first to highlight the potential risk of BSE transmission through blood transfusions (Transfusion Medicine 1996, 6:217–222), argues that blood from humans who might have become infected from eating food infected with BSE must be assumed to carry the disease. The solution would be to screen donors but there is, unfortunately, still no effective diagnostic vCJD test for blood or asymptomatic people.

France acts on threat of BSE transmission by blood

The French blood transfusion authorities are banning donors who might have become exposed to BSE in the UK.

Jan 22, 2001

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