BSE fears spark blood donor ban

Mad cow disease broke out in Britain in 1986

Japan is to restrict blood donations from people who have lived in Europe in an attempt to prevent the spread of the human form of mad cow disease.

The ban will apply to anyone who has been resident in Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Spain or Switzerland for more than six months since 1980.

These are areas where reports of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), have been prominent or are on the rise, Japan's health ministry said.

Dozens of CJD cases have been recorded in the UK

Consumption of infected meat is thought to cause the fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans, which has killed dozens of people in Britain.

Health ministry official Mitsuhiro Nishida said the ban would be introduced very soon, but did not give a precise date.

"There has never been a reported case of a human being contracting the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease through a blood transfusion," he added. "But we wanted to ensure the safety of our blood supplies."

Mr Nishida said anyone who had lived in Britain between 1980 and 1996 had already been barred from donating blood for the past year.

The United States and New Zealand have imposed similar bans.

Six million donors

Reports say six million people in Japan currently donate 1.96 million litres of blood every year.

The proposed measure would cut the number of blood donors by 0.1% to 0.3%, according to the health ministry.

BSE first broke out in British cattle herds in 1986 and resulted in wholesale herd slaughtering.

Scientists identified a link between it and CJD a decade later.

The disease, which can lie unnoticed for 20 years, causes dementia, loss of muscle control, coma and eventual death.