January 2026

🩸  The “UK residency / vCJD ban” still exists in France

Under French blood-donation rules, **anyone who has lived or stayed in the United Kingdom for a total of more than one year between 1 Jan 1980 and 31 Dec 1996 is permanently excluded from donating blood in France. This applies regardless of nationality (so including British citizens) and is due to precaution against transmission of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) from that period.

This is still in force on the official Service-public.fr and in France’s blood donation eligibility criteria.

🧠  Why the rule exists

The exclusion stems from the “mad cow disease” (BSE / vCJD) risk concept from the 1980s and 1990s. At the time, variant CJD was linked to BSE exposure and (very rarely) blood transfusions, leading many countries to take a precautionary stance.  In France and other European countries, authorities decided that anyone with such UK exposure could be excluded from donating because prions (the cause of vCJD) cannot be reliably detected/screened in blood.

🌍 Comparison with other countries

🇬🇧 United Kingdom
In the UK itself, the rule does not permanently bar all people who lived in the UK in the 1980s/90s from donating blood (because it wouldn’t make sense to exclude a large portion of the population). UK eligibility is based on general health and risk questions, and there is no lifetime bar simply for having lived there at that time.

🇺🇸 United States & 🇨🇦 Canada
As examples from outside Europe, the U.S. FDA and Canadian services have removed or reduced similar residency-based deferrals in recent years, noting low risk with current evidence.

🇮🇪 Ireland
Ireland removed its permanent deferral for UK residency back in 2019, recognising the risk as remote.

🤔 Is France about to change?

There are media reports and European scientific advice suggesting that some EU countries may consider lifting these long-standing restrictions, because evidence suggests that the actual risk of vCJD transmission by blood is extremely low and has not been seen in decades; and regulatory bodies outside France have already moved away from these exclusions.

However — as of January 2026 — these changes have not yet been officially implemented in France’s blood donation policy.

✏️ Practical implications

📌 Currently in France today:
If you lived in the UK > 1 year total between 1980–1996, you are still not eligible to donate blood through the Établissement français du sang (EFS).  It doesn’t depend on nationality. It’s based on where you lived and is a permanent bar, not just a temporary deferral.

📌 Organ donation is different. People excluded from blood donation for this reason can still be considered for organ donation, because the rules differ.

Time for Change? Blood donors in the P-O

by Cathy Grainger

There was a front-page article in the Independent last week about there being a lack of blood donors in the Pyrenees-Orientales – only 2% donate blood here as opposed to 4% nationally.

Reading the article reminded me of something I have been smarting about since we arrived in the region 16 years ago and that is, as I’m sure you’re aware, if you lived in the UK during the 1980’s, you are forbidden from giving blood due to the risk of transmission of CJD.

I’ve always given blood and , during our first summer here, saw the banners asking for donors so trotted along, set the girls up with orange juice, biscuits and puzzle books as normal, only to be told that I was “interdit”. My French wasn’t great at the time so thought I had misunderstood or filled in the form incorrectly so I went back another time, only to be told (rather gleefully I thought), that they didn’t want my infected English blood – ha ha!!

The ban arose because in the early 90’s there were 4 people who contracted CJD through blood transfusions and there is, as I understand it, no effective way of screening blood for CJD.

Clearly the ban doesn’t apply in the UK as about half the population would be forbidden from donating blood so I guess a risk was taken, but apparently there is no evidence of any new cases of CJD having been transmitted through transfusions over the last 20 years or so, largely as a result of better practices.

France isn’t the only country to ban those who have lived in the UK during that time from donating blood – the US, Australia and Ireland included, although the Irish have recently lifted their ban on the grounds that the risk is remote, practices have changed in recent years which further reduce this risk, but mostly because, given the size of the population who were previously excluded, they can expect a minimum of 10,000 more donations every year.

So the reason I’m writing this is to sound out opinion about whether a change in policy at the French blood transfusion centre would be, at least partly, the answer to the shortage of blood – not just in the PO but in France as a whole.

It’s difficult to find precise figures on the number of Brits in the PO but if it’s 20,000 and 4% donate blood, that’s 800 new donors and in France potentially 16,000 – that’s a lot of blood!

I’m not suggesting a campaign as such, but just explaining the background and asking whether others are of the same opinion.