People with haemophilia and other bleeding disorders will be told during the next fortnight whether they have been exposed to a risk of infection from the human form of BSE through treatment with plasma and other blood products.
The government is refusing to say how many people will be notified by their doctors as officials seek to assess the threat posed by normal blood transfusions and other products, after strong circumstantial evidence that two people, one of whom died from vCJD, had been infected by contaminated blood. The second died from other causes, but had signs of vCJD, rogue prion proteins in the spleen.
Sixteen people who received "normal" red blood transfusions using blood from people who subsequently died from vCJD were told of a risk months ago. But the policy about informing haemophiliacs whose plasma came from infected pools derived from thousands of people has been patchy.
It remains unclear how many of the thousands of haemophiliacs might have received contaminated products. Doctors have been asked to check which of their patients had treatment from batches which included donations from people who later developed vCJD, and to tell those who did.
John Reid, the health secretary, told MPs yesterday that the risk from plasma was uncertain, although he suggested it was lower than from whole blood transfusion, because of the dilution in pools. This is disputed by some haemophiliacs, many of whom are bitter at having been infected with HIV and hepatitis C through contamination.
Carol Grayson, founder of Haemophilia Action UK, said that her husband, Peter Longstaff, had been exposed to contaminated products on 12 occasions after their appeals for him to be put on synthetic alternatives were rejected.
She was glad the information would now be made available, but it was "too little , too late". There had been little or no support for haemophiliacs who were told they might have been put at risk, she said.
Graham Steel, of the Human BSE Foundation, said that health authorities must investigate whether they needed to go further than removing white cells from blood, a process introduced in 1999, but which fails to remove all the risk from blood. Recent studies using animals had suggested infection in plasma and red blood cells. "Further work must be carried out with urgency to find an accurate test for prion disease in blood."
Until December last year, the government had always said that the risk of developing the long-incubating vCJD through blood was theoretical, despite scientists warning that the risk was "appreciable". The two cases since then have led ministers to accept a "possible" link. A host of precautionary measures to protect the blood supply have been taken.
Britain exported blood products which might have been contaminated to 11 countries between 1996 and 2000.
