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Dept of Health

Answer

Mr. Havard: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many people in the UK in the last five years have died from (a) hepatitis C, (b) HIV and AIDS and (c) vCJD; and how many of them were blood donors. [103980] Ms Blears: Information on the number of deaths from hepatitis C, collected by the Office for National Statistics, is shown in column A of the following table. It is not known how many of these individuals were blood donors. Every unit of blood collected by the United Kingdom Blood Services (UKBS) has been tested for hepatitis C since 1991. The figures shown in column B are the number of deaths in the United Kingdom in HIV-infected individuals with or without reported AIDS. Numbers for recent years will rise as further reports are received. The Health Protection Agency, formerly the Public Health Laboratory Service, collates reports on HIV and AIDS diagnoses and deaths in HIV-infected individuals. Column C shows the number of deaths in England and Wales of HIV-infected individuals whose infection was identified as a result of donating blood. A positive HIV test will mean that the donated blood is not used. All donated blood has been tested for HIV since 1988. The chance of being infected with HIV through blood donations is currently less than one in 10 million. The National CJD Surveillance Unit collects information on the number of people who have died from vCJD. The UKBS have traced how many were blood donors. These figures are shown in columns E and F. _________________________________________________________________________________________________. A B C E F Deaths1 in England Deaths in UK of Deaths in Deaths in UK from Blood donors traced and Wales where the HIV- infected HIV-infected vCJD by UKBS who died underlying cause of individuals with individuals who from vCJD death2 was have given blood hepatitis C3 1998 92 507 5 18 2 1999 92 467 5 15 1 2000 125 475 2 28 3 2001 123 381 2 20 1 2002 4-- 310 2 17 2 _________________________________________________________________________________________________. 1 These figures are likely to underestimate the true mortality related to hepatitis C for several reasons: the certifying doctor may not always know about the existence of a hepatitis C infection, contracted many years earlier, that had given rise to another fatal liver disease. where several other factors (e.g. alcohol, other blood-borne viruses) contributed to fatal chronic liver disease, the certifying doctor may judge that one of the other factors is more important. deaths with an underlying cause of primary liver cancer are not included, even if certified as being the result of hepatitis C infection. This is because international coding rules in use at this time do not accept cancers being due to infections, except in the case of HIV/AIDS. 2 The underlying cause of death is the disease or condition that initiates the train of morbid events leading directly to death. 3 For the years 1997 to 2000, selected using a combination of underlying cause codes 070.4-070.5 from the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision (ICD-9) and the presence of text referring to hepatitis C on the death certificate. For the year 2001 underlying cause codes B17.1 and B18.2 from the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) were used. 4 Information not yet available.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

103980; 403 c318-20W

Session

2002-03

Subjects

Death Blood Donors Disease control HIV/AIDS Hepatitis Blood transfusions CJD

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk