Following the information made available yesterday by the
UK Secretary of State for Health about the possibility of transmission of
variant Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (vCJD) through a blood transfusion, the EC
Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection said that all circumstances
surrounding this case needed careful examination before any conclusion could
be drawn (1). At a meeting of the EC’s Communicable Disease Network on 17
December, a representative from the UK was requested to provide in depth facts
about the case.
Many EU member states already have precautionary measures regarding blood
products in place to reduce the chance of an incident like this occurring.
This incident occurred before the British authorities had put in precautionary
measures such as removal of leucocytes from donated blood.
The EU Commission proposed a directive on the safety and quality of human
blood and blood products which was adopted by the European Parliament and
Council one year ago (2). The Directive puts in place legally binding standards
such as requirements for testing, labelling and traceability of blood and
blood products, quality management systems in laboratories and other establishments
handling these products as well as an EU-wide surveillance system. The directive
entered into force in February 2003 and is required to be part of member
states’ national law by February 2005.
The EU is financially supporting the development of a specific blood test
for vCJD. Research into human prion diseases is a priority of one of the
seven themes of the 6th EU Research Framework Programme 2003-6 (http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/fp6/index_en.html).
For information on the European and allied countries collaborative study
group of CJD, Edinburgh, see http://www.eurocjd.ed.ac.uk/vCJD.htm.