Martin calls for blood transfusion vCJD report

THE Minister for Health has asked senior health officials to report on the alarming discovery in Britain that variant CJD can be transmitted through donated blood.

This latest and most potentially shocking mad cow disease scare has utterly changed medicine’s thinking on variant CJD.

“The Department of Health & Children and the Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) were informed today by the Department of Health in the UK of the d eath of a 69-year-old man from vCJD, who may have contracted the disease through a blood transfusion from a person who was incubating vCJD but who was symptom-free at the time of the donation in 1996.