Question from Ms. GRÉAUME Michelle (North – CRCE-K) published on 03/10/2024
Ms. Michelle Gréaume draws the attention of the Minister of Health and Access to Care to the risk of excluding people cured of syphilis from blood donation campaigns.
While the French Blood Establishment (EFS) regularly sounds the alarm about the lack of blood products, discriminatory measures against certain people are being reimplemented. Indeed, in an opinion of November 2023, the High Council of Public Health (HCSP) recommended maintaining the definitive exclusion of candidates for blood donation as long as they are or have been confirmed positive by the presence of anti-syphilis antibodies.
Until now, the contraindication concerned people with an active syphilis infection. This paradigm shift, carried out in a context of resumption of the syphilis epidemic, risks excluding a very large number of donors, endangering the already precarious balance of the French transfusion system.
This tightening of the rules relating to syphilis is justified by “the primary need to preserve the safety of recipients”. However, in reality, this measure does not seem justified, firstly because this disease is completely curable, but also in view of the methods and precautions taken with regard to blood donation, which do not allow contagion.
Indeed, in France today, treponema paleus, the causative agent of syphilis, is systematically detected when donating blood. Furthermore, neither the conditions of storage of blood bags, at 4° degrees Celsius, nor the inactivation processes used in the preparation of drugs derived from plasma, allow the survival of the virus in this environment. Finally, no transfusion contamination with syphilis has been observed for decades and some countries even go so far as to abandon its screening as it seems unjustified.
In view of these elements, she asks him to kindly clarify the ministry’s position on this subject, and, if necessary, to intervene with the health authorities so as not to endanger the transfusion system by these unjustified exclusionary measures.
Published in the OJ Senate of 03/10/2024 – page 3578
