Fed: 16,000 blood donors to be surveyed on travel history

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Fed: 16,000 blood donors to be surveyed on travel history

CANBERRA, Feb 5 AAP - Sixteen thousand blood donors will be surveyed about their travelhistories as the Red Cross attempts to prevent contamination of the nation's blood supplies.

Australia's mad cow disease watchdog has signed off on the plan which follows a banon people giving blood who spent more than six months in Britain between 1980 and 1996.

The chairman of the National Health and Medical Research Council's Special Expert Committeeon Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (SECTSE), Graeme Ryan, warned the surveycould lead to a critical shortage in blood supplies.

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