'No transmission of mad cow infection'

NEW DELHI: India received 22 vials of blood products from Britain, which could have been potentially contaminated with the human form of mad cow disease. However, there is no way of ascertaining whether there has been any transmission as the company importing these blood products has shut down.
Recent reports stating that Britain had exported blood products, possibly contaminated with the human form of mad cow disease, to at least 11 countries, including India, had set alarm bells ringing around the world.
At least five of the countries, identified most at risk, had been notified. The blood was donated by nine Britons who later died of a degenerative brain disease vCJD, a human variant of the Creutzfeldt-Jakob, commonly called mad cow disease.
But Union health minister Anbumani Ramadoss dismisses any fears of transmission. "We have received no official report from the British government. And the World Health Organisation has assured India that chances of transmission are negligible."
The blood products were imported way back in 1997. When reports first came of contaminated blood having possibly reached India, the government had said it was confident of tracking down the recipients.
But recent efforts to track down the companies and find out the recipients came to an abrupt halt when they found that the company closed its operations two years ago.
The Drug Controller of India had contacted two British companies registered in India for import of blood products to find out whether any British donor''s blood was sourced for preparing blood products. Only one of these companies is said to have imported the blood products.
But WHO too is clueless. "There is no way of chasing those who might have received the blood products," says an official. But WHO says that if a transmission chain had been established with disease jumping from one to another human being, it would have been known.