Health Canada lifts ban on blood donations after mad cow disease scare

Health Canada has given approval to lift a ban on blood donations from people who lived or traveled to the United Kingdom, Ireland or France for extended periods in the 1980s and 1990s, Canadian Blood Services announced Wednesday.

The ban was adopted by many countries’ blood agencies more than 20 years ago to prevent the transmission of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or “mad cow disease.”

But after nearly 30 years of research and monitoring, it is now clear that people who were previously ineligible to donate based on travel criteria can now donate safely, said Dr. Aditi Khandelwal, medical officer of Canadian Blood Services. .

“Removing that standard won’t affect the safety of our blood supply. But what we can do is remove so many new people, even those who have recently been put off donating blood for these reasons. It’s about improving donor access for those who already have,” said Khandelwal, a hematologist and transfusion physician in Toronto. .

“This is a large-scale effort by many people in Canada and around the world, including experts, to understand this particular issue,” she said, adding that both the United States and Australia hope to have a similar approach in 2022. He mentioned that the ban on donations had been lifted.

The news comes hours after Health Canada authorized Hema Québec, which manages Quebec’s blood supply, to lift a similar ban.

The changes will take effect nationwide on December 4th.

Since 2003, an estimated 70,000 people in Canada have been prevented from donating blood due to travel history to the United Kingdom, Ireland or France, said Ron Vezina, vice president of communications for Canadian Blood Services.

He said about 7,500 people had been turned away over the past five years or so, noting they were still registered in the Blood Agency’s system and could be contacted to consider donating.

The number of people able to donate blood across Canada is likely to be “much higher,” Vezina said.

“The biggest unknown for us is how many people are self-deferring. Either they just heard about this (ban) from someone else, or they think they are ineligible. I never even thought about donating blood.”

More blood donors are desperately needed in Canada, Vezina said. Currently, only one in every 81 eligible people in Canada donates blood, leaving Canada dependent on a “small army” for its blood supply.

“Everyone thinks someone is covering it or doing it,” he says.

“The more people we can bring into the fold and take some of the pressure off our small force, the more able we are to meet Canada’s blood needs.”

As of December 4, those who may be newly eligible to donate blood are those who have stayed in the UK for a total of three months or more between January 1, 1980 and December 31, 1996, or those who have undergone a blood transfusion in the UK. The person who received it.

People who spent a total of five or more years in France or the Republic of Ireland between 1980 and 2001, or who received a blood transfusion there, may also be eligible to donate.

Khandelwal said people who lived in these countries for long periods of time were likely eating beef products from cows affected by bovine spongiform encephalopathy, at a time when little was known about the disease. It is said that it will be done.

He said 231 cases of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease have been reported worldwide due to consumption of beef products.

There have been two cases of infection in Canada so far. Mr Khandelwal said one was resident in the UK and the other in Saudi Arabia and had consumed beef imported from the UK, and the incidents occurred in 2002 and 2011 respectively.

He said it is now known that the average time between infection and onset of symptoms is eight-and-a-half years, and death can occur within about 14 months.

That means people living in high-risk countries in the 1980s and 1990s would have developed the disease long before now, she says.

An additional safeguard is the fact that white blood cells are reduced or removed from donated blood before transfusion, Khandelwal said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 22, 2023.