The ban on those who have spent a year or more living in the UK from giving blood in Ireland will not be relaxed until a reliable test for the human form of mad cow disease becomes available, the Irish Blood Transfusion Service said yesterday.
Publishing its 2004 annual report, the agency said it was applying this month to the Irish Medicines Board for permission to start clinical trials on a new filter system aimed to reduce the risk of transmission of vCJD.
IBTS medical director William Murphy said such trials would be "the first in the world".
He said there had been a lot of progress internationally over the past 12 months on developing a test for the disease.
"It's something obviously we are keeping a very close eye on, and we will try those [ tests] out as soon as they become available for clinical trial. He said hopefully this would be in about six months or a year.
But he stressed it could be five or 10 years before a reliable test was developed and "it might never happen".
In the absence of such a test the ban on people who had spent a year or more, in total, in the UK, between 1980 and 1996, would remain in place, Dr Murphy said.
"We are now certain this disease can be spread by blood transfusion. We also know the biggest risk for having got this disease is having lived in the UK between 1980 and 1996. Put those two together, there is no way we are going to take the ban away until we are on very solid ground."
IBTS chairwoman Maura McGrath said vCJD was a challenging issue for the blood board. It had succeeded, however, in increasing the number of donations collected by 5 per cent last year, despite the introduction of stricter donor criteria.
While there was a 2 per cent increase in the amount of blood issued to hospitals in the first seven months of 2005, demand had also continued to rise, leading to further pressure on the blood supply.
Last June hospitals were forced to postpone elective surgeries for three days because of a shortage of blood stocks. Following a special appeal from the IBTS, donations surged by 30 per cent.
However, Ms McGrath said "our preference is not to go for appeals" because they created peaks and valleys in supply. "We would almost like to change the psyche, to some degree, of the Irish public at large to perhaps donate more frequently and on a more continuous basis. That is the optimum for us.
"And I think we have a challenge as an organisation both at board level and at management level to begin to step outside the boundaries and the box in our thinking to ensure we do create that level and that change in mindset," she said.
IBTS officials have travelled to Britain in recent weeks to monitor the effectiveness of mobile units which are used there to collect donations.
IBTS chief executive Andrew Kelly said it was considering buying a €150,000 three-bed "truck", which would operate early next year, in an effort to boost the donation rate, particularly in Dublin.
"We are also trying to target the younger population more to encourage them to become regular donors," he said.
