Canberra Cold On Call For Organ Ban

By Steve Dow

Federal health authorities have dismissed a call to ban people who have lived in Britain from donating organs, despite fears of introducing the human form of mad cow disease in Australia.

Transplantation experts have convinced the Federal Government that for now there is no need for a ban, despite a national ban coming into effect from this month on blood donations from people who have lived more than six months in Britain between 1980 and 1996.

The unprecedented step was taken to prevent the spread of the new variant Creudzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) - a human form of mad cow disease.

In August, state and federal health ministers opted to "defer" blood donations from former British residents after an article in the British medical journal The Lancet proved blood transmission of vCJD was possible in sheep.

The new variant has claimed 23 lives, mostly in Britain, and many fear it could be the start of a new epidemic of the disease, which causes holes in the brain.

Federal Health Minister Michael Wooldridge emphasised that the risk of blood infection was small as he announced an extra $1.6million funding for the Australian Red Cross Blood Bank, which will immediately lose 30,000 regular donors and up to 800,000 potential donors.

A spokeswoman for the CJD Support Network, Sue Byrne, said recipients of human pituitary hormones - a source of another type of CJD infection - were banned from donating organs, and this ban should also extend to former British residents.

She said there was some evidence that the disease could live in the human appendix and tonsils for years before being detected.

CJD has been known to incubate in humans for decades before taking hold.

A spokeswoman for Dr Wooldridge said that blood donations were split up and harvested, and thus difficult to track back to their donors. In the case of organs, however, the donation was one on one, and potential recipients could make their minds up after being informed the donor had lived in Britain.

The medical director of the Victorian Organ Donation Service, Bill Silvester, said the service's policy, reached in the past month in line with the Transplant Society of Australia and New Zealand, was that organ donation by people who have lived in Britain should be allowed.

He said the estimated risk of vCJD was probably no more than one case every 4000 years and had to be weighed against the 5 to 20per cent of potential organ recipients who died waiting for an organ.

Copyright © 2000 The Age Company Ltd.

This article posted January 23, 2001.