Press Releases

Transcript of Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food

Following is the transcript of a media session by the Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong, at the Central Government Offices this (October 10) morning:

Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food: I just want to emphasise that the recent case of dengue fever where two patients were given blood from a donor who was incubating dengue virus was a rather rare occasion and it is very unfortunate because when this donor donated blood, the donor did not have any symptoms of dengue. It was a rather, rather rare occasion. This person not knowing that he or she had the infection donated blood and this was given to two patients. One of the patients died of the original illness. The other patient had mild reaction and had evidence of infection by the dengue virus but had since recovered.

I just want to assure the public that we have a very good blood transfusion service. The Hong Kong Blood Transfusion Services adopts internationally accepted standards for ensuring the safety of our blood products. They do it through three mechanisms. For each unit of blood, they do a routine testing for five of the accepted viruses or bacteria that we do not want to see in our blood. These include the HIV AIDS virus, the Hepatits B and C, the Human T-lymphotropic virus and Syphilis. These are in fact the tests that most developed countries do routinely for all blood units. The other measure that the Blood Transfusion Services does is that it takes a very detailed health history of the person who wants to donate blood because you can never screen out all the known pathogens. No blood transfusion service in the world can ever eliminate all the known viruses and bacteria in the blood. These are the five that are internationally accepted that are what one should do in developed countries.

The other part of the mechanism to ensure the safety of the blood products is to do a very detailed health history to make sure people who are potentially infected with viruses or bacteria do not donate blood. It is called a donor deferral system. The donor is asked to defer donating blood if there are certain conditions. Amongst the things that donors are asked to do is that they are asked not to donate blood if they are not feeling well. If they are not feeling well, they may be incubating certain illnesses and viruses and that obviously could lead to transmission to another person who gets the donated blood. It is also good sense because if you are not well, you should not donate blood because your own resistance is low.

The third measure that is done is that for individuals who are donating blood, they are advised to let the Blood Transfusion Services know if they have symptoms after they have donated blood as in this instance. It is because if a person is incubating virus, he may not have the symptoms. The symptoms may come only after he donated blood. After this incident, the Blood Transfusion Services has intensified the advice given to potential donors. They are asked to inform the Blood Transfusion Services if they have any symptoms within two weeks of the blood donation. These are the initial measures taken by the Blood Transfusion Services.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion)

Thursday, October 10, 2002