Irish health experts have moved to reassure people that the risk of contracting the deadly brain disease CJD from blood transfusions is extremely small.
This follows the news that a 69-year-old UK man, who died from variant CJD, may have contracted the disease through a blood donation received six years earlier.
Experts had long thought it was possible but unlikely that a person could contract CJD through blood donations. In the UK case, the blood was taken from the donor long before he was diagnosed with the disease.
The Irish health authorities were informed today and moved quickly to examine the implications.
At a hastily convened press briefing in the Department of Justice this evening, senior officials in the Irish Blood Transfusion Service, the Department of health, and the national CJD advisory group told the media that the risk of the UK case happening here is extremely low.
The IBTS has already taken a number of precautionary steps, including the removal of white cells from blood, which are considered to be potential sources of infection.
For the past two years, people who have lived in the UK for five or more years at the height of the BSE scare are excluded from giving blood in Ireland.
There has been just one CJD case in Ireland, that of a person who lived in the UK for most of their lives.
The Minister for Health and Children has asked Irish experts to meet tomorrow to see what further measures may be needed to protect blood supplies.
