Seventy put at risk by blood board mistake

MORE THAN 70 people received blood transfusions from donors who were not cleared for a deadly virus because of an administrative error.

Since July, the Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) has not been accepting donations from people who had travelled to the United States or Canada in the previous month.

Blood transfusions have been known to have caused some of more than 4,000 cases 284 of them fatal of the West Nile Virus, usually caused by mosquitoes, in the US last year.