Sanquin is changing the rules for donating after blood transfusions. Patients who received blood after 1980 were no longer allowed to be blood donors. This rule was changed on October 1, because from that moment on the medical reason behind the suffering determines whether someone can be a donor or not. That’s good news: those who have experienced first-hand how life-saving donor blood can now also donate blood or plasma themselves.
Infectious disease
Initially, this rule was introduced to prevent infection with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) through blood transfusion. This brain disease is probably caused by eating meat from cows with BSE (‘mad cow disease’).
It can take years for a person to develop symptoms after infection. There is no test to detect the disease in the blood, but it can be transmitted through blood. Blood banks around the world agreed: the spread of vCJD through blood transfusion must be prevented. Therefore, blood recipients were excluded from blood donation.
Delete is now safe
Now, 40 years ago, a lot has changed. As early as the 1990s, foodborne vCJD contamination was prevented by culling livestock herds. The incubation period of vCJD has also passed by a wide margin, no new cases of vCJD have been detected since 2016.
Finally, it appears that only a very small number of people are infected in those countries most affected by contaminated food. Furthermore, after the introduction of leukocyte filtration in 1999 (filtering white blood cells), no further transmission of vCJD via blood transfusion has been identified. Reason enough to change the policy for donation after blood.
Donate life-saving blood
This makes it possible for a large group of people to become contributors (again). The reason for the blood transfusion received is certain. With 379,000 blood transfusions per year, this could give thousands to tens of thousands of people the opportunity to donate blood (again).
(Sources: Sanquin, Sanquin Newsletter)
2024-10-06 16:24:05
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