As I wrote a while back, I feel like a bit of a hypocrite asking readers of this page to give blood, when I have never done so myself. I vowed to donate blood as regularly as I could.
However, as some readers noted, this may not be possible in Japan. Well, I checked a couple of weeks ago, and the deal is that Japanese hospitals don't want my blood because I'm British!
It's not quite that simple obviously. The rules at the blood donation centre state that no-one who has lived in certain countries for more than 6 months since 1980 can give blood in Japan. Top of the list of 'banned' countries is the UK. The reason is that we may have CJD, or Mad Cow Disease. Apparently, CJD does not show up in blood tests, so there is the risk if you are British, or lived in Britain or some other European countries as a student or whatever, you may be carrying the disease, and then pass it on to a Japanese recipient of your blood.
It all sounds fairly sensible, I suppose. The main question I had was, if the blood of ALL Brits, plus the French, Germans and some other nations is contaminated, then how are blood transfusions in those countries dealt with? Are they importing 'clean', 'pure' Japanese blood?
I tried to donate blood last weekend in front of Kyoto Station, but they had posted some oyaji guy out in front of the big Red Cross bus and he said I wouldn't be able to fill out the form. I told him I thought maybe I could, name,m address, past illnesses, etc., but he wanted to get rid of me. I'll bet if I had gotten past him to a nurse, everything would have been fine.
Posted by: nils at January 20, 2005 02:04 AMI have the same problem over here in the States and it's pretty frustrating. I've certainly seem more crazy bastards living over here than I remember in the UK!
Posted by: Phil Knight at January 24, 2005 03:07 AMYou would be banned from donating blood in Australia as well. In fact anyone who spent more than six months in any of the Mad-Cow outbreak countries during the period when contaminated meat was being sold to the public is banned. As far as I can tell there isn't a test cheap enough to apply to every at risk donation. The countries that had the outbreaks accept local donations as usual and swallow the risk that someone clean might be infected.
Strange that you should have done this....... I tried doing this a little while back myself.
Anyway, I kinda had a feeling they would not want my gaijin blood anyway, but it seems like they came up with a pretty valid reason as well. It seems that the missus can't give blood now either, plus a whole bunch of our Japanese friends whom we knew during there college days in the UK.
I wrote about it a little when it happened (http://www.ippoippo.net/blog/index.php?p=4)
Hi Gavin,
Thanks for stopping by.
If you read my archives, you'll realize it's not so strange that I would want to give blood.
As you say, Japanese folks who have lived in the UK have been tainted as well, and from the looks of it, it's not just Japan that doesn't want our dirty blood.
Considering my fast food diet, my daily dose of 20-30 cigarettes and my bi-weekly (errr.. that's twice a week, not once every two weeks) whiskey binge, the Imperial Palace's moat water is probably cleaner than my blood.. No sars, madcow, or chiken flu though! :)
Posted by: Rob at January 25, 2005 05:00 PMBTW, it was on the news this morning that people that spent ONE DAY in France or UK between S55 (1980?) and H8 (1994?) cannot give blood or donate organs.
Posted by: Dirk at March 9, 2005 09:59 AMI saw it Dirk. That means Megumi's blood is no good either, and you and Naomi must be out too.
Posted by: Gary at March 14, 2005 10:36 AMWe arrived in/after 1995, although I doubt it makes a difference.
Posted by: Dirk at March 15, 2005 06:51 AM