The medical director of the Blood Transfusion Services Board and other officials will meet the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, this week to clarify issues surrounding blood donations and the risks of contracting Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), the human form of mad cow disease.
Dr William Murphy, national medical director of the BTSB, will brief the Minister on the risks of contracting the disease and discuss a future option to ban blood donors who had spent a cumulative six months in Britain between 1980 and 1996.
"This could amount to about 13 per cent of our present 100,000 donors based on a survey carried out by us, but a ban like this would be unlikely to be brought in precipitately," Dr Murphy said.
He said a decision still had to be made and the options were being reviewed constantly. If more information was put forward of a more substantial risk, the situation could change, he said.
"If we introduced such a ban, there would be a serious shortfall and blood would not be available for surgery. We would have to replace the 13,000 excluded donors with new donors," he stated.
He and other BTSB officials were meeting the Minister to go through these issues in detail so that Mr Martin could understand the full picture, Dr Murphy said.
If the ban was brought in, donors would have to be asked if they had spent six months or more in Britain between those dates.
They would also be asked if they had spent a lot of time going to and from Britain in that period which would amount to a cumulative six months, he said.
Dr Murphy said the French and the Dutch had decided not to introduce a similar ban, while Germany, Austria, US, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan had banned blood donors who spent six months in the Britain during those years.