§ Lord Clement-Jonesasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will invest to prevent up to 70.000 transfusion patients each year from continuing to be put at risk from United Kingdom-sourced, non-virally inactivated transfusion plasma; and [HL2553]
In the light of the £88 million spent to secure safer products for haemophiliacs, and the £55 million to secure the supply of United States-sourced plasma for certain patients, whether they will consider an additional £9.6 million to supply a United States-sourced, virally-inactivated transfusion plasma for the 70,000 patients who undergo plasma transfusions each year. [HL2555]
§ Baroness AndrewsTo date there is no evidence worldwide that variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease has ever been transmitted through blood. As a precautionary measure all fresh frozen plasma (FFP) produced by the United Kingdom blood services uses single unit plasma from UK blood donors which has been leucodepleted to remove the white cells which evidence suggests may carry the greatest risk of transmitting variant CJD. Although most UK F'FP is not virally inactivated, high levels of safety are achieved by using single unit, as opposed to pooled plasma, by screening out potential high risk donors and by testing every unit of donated blood for the presence of infections such as HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C before it is released to hospitals.
The decision taken to import FFP from the United States for young babies and children born after 1 January 1996 will provide additional protection to the most vulnerable group who will not have been exposed to Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy through the food chain. The National Blood Service is currently involved in negotiating for supplies of FFP for this group of patients and plans to have it available later this year. A commercially produced FFP product, sourced from the United States, is also available for the National Health Service to purchase.
127WAThe Government expert Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Blood and Tissue for Transplantation is continuing to keep this issue under review and there are currently no plans to allocate further funding.