Blood screening plea as donor dies of vCJD (From Bournemouth Echo)

Blood screening plea as donor dies of vCJD

7:00am Saturday 5th September 2009

• Print
• Email
• Share
• Comments(0)

A CAMPAIGN for all donated blood to be screened for the human form of mad cow disease is being led locally by a young woman from Fordingbridge, after her grandmother, a keen blood donor, died from the disease.

Lisa Farrant, 22, lost her grandmother Audrey Cook to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob (vCJD) disease in 2007, after she had become unwell during the previous Christmas with flu-like symptoms, deteriorating rapidly until her death six months later.

“It’s worrying to think that my grandmother, as a keen donator of blood, thinking she was doing some good, could have passed this on to other people.

“So many cases could go unnoticed, and people just aren’t aware of it. It’s important to get this message out there”, Lisa said.

She added: “Very quickly, after having the flu in December she got a lot worse very quickly. She became quadriplegic and we believe she was deaf and blind because she didn’t react to anything.

“It was really difficult because we were so close and to have her not recognise me was devastating. It was made worse by the fact that we didn’t know at the time what had caused it.”

Alzheimer’s Disease was originally entered as the cause of death on Audrey’s death certificate, before her family not convinced by the diagnosis pressed for a post-mortem, which revealed the 72-year-old grandmother had vCJD.

Lisa believes her grandmother, who was a school cook in the 1980s, contracted the disease after working in the kitchens where mechanically recovered meat was often used in school meals.

Lisa has teamed up with Portsmouth mother Christine Lord, who lost her 24-year-old son Andrew Black to the disease in December 2007 and the pair are also calling for all post-mortems to include a check for vCJD so the extent of the disease is known.

A spokesperson for the National Blood Service said while there was no approved test of spleens and tonsils as yet, the Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs (SaBTO) are evaluating the tests and hope to make their recommendations to the government soon.

For more information about the campaign go to justice4andy.com

• Print
• Email
• Share
• Comments(0)