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As part of St Christopher’s School’s Think Pink activities the stage was all set for an inaugural blood donation drive, ‘collecting Pink Blood’ … but it ended up with slightly redder faces all round.
This event was scheduled to take place last Thursday to assist the Central Blood Bank of Bahrain (CBBB), which supplies blood and blood products such as red blood cells, platelets and plasma to all private and government hospitals.
However, the CBBB pulled out at the last minute when it found out the majority of the volunteers were Brits who had been living in the UK between 1980 and 1996. The bank will not accept blood from them for fear of passing on bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease, a fatal neurodegenerative disease, to the local population.
It may be most easily transmitted to human beings by eating food contaminated with the brain, spinal cord or digestive tract of infected carcasses. However, it should also be noted that the infectious agent, although most highly-concentrated in nervous tissue, can be found in virtually all tissues throughout the body, including blood.
In humans, it is known as new variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. By October 2009, it had killed 166 people in the UK, and 44 elsewhere. Between 460,000 and 482,000 BSE-infected animals had entered the human food chain before controls on high-risk offal were introduced in 1989.
The disease has a long incubation period, so many authorities around the globe believe it is better to be safe than sorry.
