UK press report points to tainted blood exports, New Delhi to check

New Delhi will check with London on a report in The Times that Britain exported blood products, possibly contaminated with the human form of...

New Delhi will check with London on a report in The Times that Britain exported blood products, possibly contaminated with the human form of mad cow disease, to at least 11 countries, including India, during the late 1990s.

Raising fears of further transmission of the deadly condition, The Times said British officials last week contacted five of the countries identified as Most at Risk from the imported blood products which were donated by nine people who died from Variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease.

The British government is being accused of ‘‘lethal secrecy’’ after refusing to identify publicly the five nations, which have been the subject of risk assessments by the Health Protection Agency. The exports of the suspect products were effected in the late 1990s.

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Besides India where 953 vials of albumin was sent, the other ten recipient countries are Ireland (polio vaccine, 83,500 doses), Brazil (44,864 vials albumin, 80 vials immunoglobulin), Dubai (2,400 vials albumin), Turkey (840 vials immunoglobulin), Brunei (400 vials albumin), Egypt (144 vials albumin), Morocco (100 vials albumin), Oman (100 vials immunoglobulin), Russia (23 vials Factor VIII) and Singapore (three vials immunoglobulin).

In New Delhi, Health officials said they had not yet been contacted. ‘‘We have received no information. Even if the risk is less, Britain should have voluntarily informed all countries,’’ said Ashwani Kumar, Drug Controller General of India.

Health officials said similar reports of contamination reached India last year but ‘‘nothing concrete’’ was found in the investigations that followed.

‘‘We tried to find out. But no such consignment wass found to have reached India. We don’t know about the latest report,’’ said Prasada Rao, Health Secretary.

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Though only 953 vials of contaminated albumin are said to have been exported, the problem, says Ashwani Kumar, lies in the fact India imports blood products from Europe.

‘‘India has a problem manufacturing blood products like albumin, Rh factors for mostly thalassaemic patients.

It is impossible to manufacture such products in India because one needs large plasma pools for that. In India, such things are not possible as we don’t pay for blood. These countries have such facilities,’’he said.

According to Kumar, all essential tests to detect HIV and hepatitis are conducted at the time of import but India doesn’t run tests for mad cow disease.

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‘‘We rely on the certification submitted by the countries which export it,’’ he said.

‘‘Retrieving each contaminated vial would not have been a problem had we been informed,’’ he maintained.

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